X 




E CANALEROTHE 
OOPEEL 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Chap. Copyright No... 



Shell._ __.^a C3 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



The Canalero 
The Trooper 

Poems in Reminiscence 

OF REAR-ADMIRAL WALKER'S NICARAGUAN CANAL 
EXPEDITION IN 1898 

AND OF VOLUNTEER ARJVIY LIFE LATER AT TAMPA 
AND MONTAUK 

WITH NOTES 



S / BY 

Pi'H. BELKISTAP 



BOSTON T. T. BOUVE 
& COMPANY MCM 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Ubrnrj of Goj3g^eff« 

FEB 90 1900 

'^^hUr Of Qmrlghts^ 

/foo 

54119 



copybight, 1900, 
By p. H. Belkiiap. 



SECOND COPV. 






TO N. S. H. SANBEES. 

Dear Nat — 

As you fancied the manuscript, do take the 
book. Bouve and I used to agree dedications to be non- 
sense, and I certainly suppose you would accord, yet I 
find they are not so entirely. — I scribbled, too, the 
preface at your house. Beside, rewrote it under your 
behests. My dear Sanders, 

Faithfully, 

Belknap. 

Oct. 2 (if not 3), '99; 

NoKwooD, Massachusetts. 



PREFACE. 



The present work shows some boyish vein, I think, 
and the idea at first disturbed me ; but I discover that I 
am not dissatisfied on the whole. Such inconsequence 
as exists appears, after all, chiefly in places, and not in 
the sum. Yet I wish I could hope that my production 
may fulfil the two excellent ones of the motives from 
which it springs. Whatever reader shall take my sym- 
pathy, will find the whole poems enforcing a certain one 
view — a view of the United States with respect to the 
rest of the nations as we are approaching our primacy. 
The poems should develope this surveyal in their course ; 
and this has not been their least purpose. 

For my other fair actuation to the sin of verse, it is 
*' the appearances of life," — Stevenson's phrase ; with 
which he couples another, which might be the appear- 
ances of still-life, of things. All is interesting ; engross- 
ing ; and incident is as much as event, a drop of rain as 
a blood-drop of a dynamited czar. My result — that 
may be estimated; as bad or better; but it comes (so 
much is true) of a contemplation commanded from with- 
out, rather than directed from within. 

Unfortunately, besides a citizen's prompting to his 
criticism, and an intelligence' instinct to record the felt 
and seoQ, I disgustedly detect a third impulse, perhaps, 
in some of the poems — the vulgar one of a vanity. 

8 



4 PBEFACE. 

I do not see from what ground^ in me, such a weed 
should have grown. In Admiral Walker's expedition of 
1898, to determine upon the feasibility of the Nica- 
raguan Canal, I was a subordinate member, and was one 
of the least in acquiring successes within reach. In- 
quietly — yet listlessly — I came home from Central 
America at the outbreak of the war with Spain; list- 
lessly, doubting the military opportunity; listlessly 
still, though knowing that instancy is the fore-success 
of action. I met my merit in only getting to my regi- 
ment (the First United States Volunteer Cavalry) after 
the two squadrons that were taken had left Tampa on 
the Santiago campaign, I could have been in time. 
But thus is disclaimed here in prose any self-satisfaction 
possible in the verse. 

I have taken the liberty, in an appendix, to give some 
!N"icaraguan pronunciations; connoting there also other 
peculiar matters. The numerical references are to these 
memoranda. P. H. B. 

Perncroft, Danvers, Mass. ; 
September 20, 1899. 



co]:frTEi?rTS 

OF 

THE CANALEEO. THE TEOOPER 



PAGE 

To N. S. H. Sanders 1 

Preface 3 

THE CANALERO 

Landed 11 

All Up in Quarters 13 

The Barber (Old Mulatto) 14 

Despatches 14 

To Salvadora 15 

Field-Work 15 

First Work on the Lake-to-Brito Line 16 

The Dispositions of Dundas Vacil 

I. Signless — i 17 

n. Naughtinesse 18 

About Camp San Pablo 19 

Western Side «... 20 

Life on the Lajas 21 

PoAvder at Rivas 22 

Unkind Who Lost the World 24 

Bad Sunday , . . . 26 

Rubber 27 

Their Own Petard 29 

The Narrimba 31 

Engineering and Campaign 32 

The Quitter Camp 33 

Mcanor 33 

5 



6 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

"Hwang" 34 

Miss and the Republic 37 

Philosophy at San Carlos 39 

Quo' He ! 39 

Some More of Dundas Vacil 

HI. Boca Colorado 41 

IV. Heart and Manhood 43 

Vigor at Tambor Grande . 43 

Year After Year , . . . . 44 

Shipboard 

I. Sea by Shore . 45 

II. Looks in the Wind ......... 48 

in. Rolling 49 

Dundas 

V. Signless — ii 61 

Rome — and England — Next 'tis Thou .... 52 

Crude Metal 55 

THE TROOPER 

The Death Forefigured • 63 

The Last of Vacil 

VI. One, Ones 64 

VII. One Alone 66 

The Infantryman from Savannah QQ 

Rabble Thinkings of a Good Officer 67 

The Praise of the Nag 

I. Dawn's-Token 68 

II. Tempest 70 

The Tampa-Leaguer 72 

Clark, of the Santiago Captains 73 

Our Shadow of Porto Rico 76 

The Two Mortalities 78 

Sleeping in One's Clothes in an Armory .... 79 

The Prairie Seat 81 

Camp Presto 82 

The Broken Flower . 83 



CONTENTS. 7 

PAGS 

Pember of the Regular Eighty-Second .... 84 

To the Untrained Troop-Horse 85 

Philology of the Arm 87 

A Pair of Sonnets 88 

The Army 89 

The Praise of the I^]'ag 

III. Watering — Seen in the Distance . ... 90 

IV. Passage 91 

V. Beauty the Beast 92 

To Major-General Lord Kitchener, of Khartoum . 92 
To the Cambridge Men, After the Football Game 

of 1898 Won from Yale 94 

Chief of A ! 96 

Dunnage ..... 99 

AMERICA TERRENIA — ULTIMATE IMPERIALISM 101 

Names and Terms 105 



THE CANALEBO, 



LANDED. 

Beyond undimpled dark lagoon 

The seas their wide white seething toss. 
And sound a midnight of no moon 
Up to the silent Southern Cross. 

Thy Cross — thou more romantic main ; 
The splendid Spaniard of the sky ! 
But where stood admirals of Spain 
One only bark rides ghostly nigh. 

A lofty race, for God or gold, 

These billows steered and storied then. 

Yon barrack roofs now stilly hold 

In slumberous shades the mightier men. 



La Fe. 



THE CANALERO. 



ALL UP IN QUAETEES. 

The bugle, whicli still liad slept as we, 
Leapt live into sudden note with morn ; 

And, sharp like a thorn 

Through our cot-sides borne. 
Then circled the air and summoned he ! 

But when some had sworn, 

And the day got ray, 
A lave in the wave went merrily. 

See men and the sun at the gallant wind 
Of the ruthlessly-rising clear command ! 

But oh, were banned 

The soul misplanned 
Who blotches the new-life's spirit signed ; 

As all grows grand. 

The fool in the pool 
Whose jest breaks the tune of the time and mind ! 



14 - THE CAN ALE BO. THE TROOPER. 



THE BARBER (OLD MULATTO). 

Sir, I perceive a scratch, upon your cheek ; - 
Of such a matter, sir, I always speak, 
Or you might lay it at my razor's door ; 
But, as I speak, you know 'twas one afore. 
I bin this bisness, sir, for thiTtj-eight ye'r ; 
I got my knowledge, sir, of human nature. 



DESPATCHES. 

Jesup, black and careless, 

Looking a Erench, cook 

(From a jaw not hairless, 
And white cap on him, gadzook !) — 

Jesup dashing through 

Greytown, hullabaloo, 

Had a captain call him to, 

To tear less. 

" Halt ? " said Jesup — " Twenty 

Ragamuffins ! ride 

I with mail f oam-sprenty 

Eor the Admiral. Outside 
There is ISTewport. Shoot — 
Better not, though, do't" . . 

Mused the captain to his boot, 
" Que gente ! " * 

* What a nation ! is truer than the plain translation. 



THE CANALjSBO. 15 



TO SALYADORA. 



GooD-BT, bonita, now I go, — 

Those still can see thee who remain, 

But I, the silent stranger, no, 

Dwell never near thy grace again. 

Good-by, bonita, — hoiv I care 

Fm glad thou'rt of the knowledge free; 
But, in my cruel-sweet despair, 

What thanks I think and send to thee. 

For here, where careless pleasure flies, 
A bird to snare with lightest ease, 

He languors not in thy black eyes. 
Which only laugh with purities. 

Good-by — with soft and bright esteem^ 
Beauty of simple worth to know. 

Give me one thought, a thought my dream, 
Bonita. Ah, good-by ! I go. 



FIELD-WORK. 

We go into camp, into woods that belong to the beasts 

And the senator trees ; 
Then the animal stops, where is scarred the place of his 
feasts, 

And he fears and flees. 



16 THE CANAL^EO. THE TBOOPEB. 

A band of monkeys above the tents we chaffed ; 

And one was absurder 
Than all the rest, with her blue-eyed young, as we 
laughed — 

When a shot was her murder. 

She cried, and protected her clinging baby still. 

The man who had shot her, — 
She humanly moaned, — his rifle re-aimed, to kill ; 

And made her last flutter. 

Oh, fast through the trees the band of the branches post, 

To wail and to chatter ! 
And we got the brown little orphan, and they had most 

Of brains in the matter. 

FIEST WOEK 01^ THE LAKE-TO-BEITO LINE. 

The lake ^^ on the San Carlos side 
Has surface fair as arm of maid's, 

For, cast up at the great divide, 

Not yet descend the troubling Trades. 

Their high wings hurry farther west, 
And there efface the limpid smile. 

And heave the wave and whirl the crest 
Towards land in distance' bluest mile. 

There rises, near that other shore, 
The fireless now, but questioned* cone, 

Whose steeps so strangely even soar, 
Of Ometepe unalone — 

* Because this volcano may he extinct. Madera is so. 



THE GANALJERO. 17 

"Who with his sister shares their isle, 

Madera she — the rounder born. 
They stand between where clouds deJSle 

And where the tide is windy-torn. 

Leave these behind — 'tis on the marge 
The coming brain its business breaks^^ 

Where diggers make the ground discharge 
That bottle vp-hich is weighty stakes. 

Your mere slim glass of Rhine or Erench 

Can clear a ministerial task ; 
The engineer's grave point or bench 

May be the undecaying flask.* 



THE DISPOSITIONS OE DUNDAS VACIL. 

I. 

Signless. 
I. 
To you, to you, 
Eirst thing I'd do, 
I would send these flowers of blue. 
Once in your hand 
You'd understand 
Who was in this stranger-land. 

* Spikes rust and wood rots. In engineering, to mark and find 
again the initial point of a survey a bottle is often employed, 
buried in the earth, on account of its indestructibility by de- 
terioration. 



18 TRE CANAL^BO. THE TBOOPEB, 

But yet so proudly 

Disallowed 
All has been I would have vowed, 

That it is time 

Kemembrance, rhyme, 
Sullen stayed before their crime. 

So many give 

Me monitive 
Words upon the way to live ! 

But I am bold, — 

You should be told 
You've no right to be so cold. 

11. 

Naughtinesse. 

You would like to be nightly diamond-starred. 
They are lovely, Marie, but they are hard. 

What girl wouldn't play for a house of pelf, 
To give to others and grace herself ? 

Take care to station that you relate ; 
An easier thing than to that create. 

< You would not give yourself dead away ' ; 
What wisdom for maiden lips to say ! 

You would not give yourself dead away — 
For God's sake, do it alive some day ! 



THE CAN ALE RO. Ig 

You are very light for a Juggernaut, 
Yet under your feet my heart is caught. 

If I could hurt you as you hurt me, 
The worst of it is that I'd not, Marie. 



ABOUT CAMP SAN PABLO. 

Mathematics are divine 

In the lightning of the line ; 

There's the universe's verve 

In the living of the curve ; 

More than you can think they think, 

Prom the deity they wink, 

Who is conscious in the work 

Of direction and the cirque. 

What can lance of straightness bar — 

Through a field or to a star ? 

And, invisibly afly, 

Bears the arc unerring by. 

There is nothing ever balks — 

'Tis the truth of reason walks ; 

With a tripod to him tied, 

Takes, from point to point, his stride ; 

And no hill or river blench. 

As he crosses, bench to bench. 

Let the Coliseum's wall. 

Let a lengthened ropewalk fall, 

But the circle, swift and sure. 

And the leaping line endure. 

Shall we slave them to our skill ? 

Yes, if we obey their will. 



20 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

For the intellects ne'er gave 
Such a despot in a slave. 
They are driven, ready drudge, 
But themselves will solely judge ; 
They are — by a hair transgress — 
Adamant in nothingness. 
Go against their viewless thought, 
We are by as stone up-brought ; 
For what is it that we feel ? 
God — whose sentience is His steel ! 
So much, that, unhumbled back 
We re-seek their wandered track. 

Line and clearing spend the light. 
Then the cutters' cries, at night, 
And American ahaha^s 
Wake the canvas on the Lajas. 

WESTERN SIDE. 

Here the sun is soft as strong, 
And the bright air catches fan ; 

Endless breeze 
Lifts the leaves of green eternal. 

Olouds voyage on their blue canal— 
From the sailor Carib's sea 

To Balboa's — 
Training over Nicaragua. 

At the villain turn of road 
Lay a likeness of the moon, 

Such a day ; 
With another slain as fondly ; — 



THE CANALEEO. 21 

Story of a sliot and sire, 
Horrid hoofs and fated love ; 

And a gloom 
Of a boy and bride of olive. 

Oh ! the squadron of the sky 
Ever streams the still serene, 

East to west, 
O'er a sweet and soulless greenerie. 



LIFE 0:^r THE LAJAS. 

In the tangle of a south, 
Fifty from the lago mouth, 
Slides or slumbers through a dell 
Eattlesnake, the cascabel. 
Followed by the surfy roar, 
From the lago fifty more. 
Lumpish iguana sits. 
Whom the armed canoeman hits ; 
And, upon another limb 
Sunning (all the same to him), 
Marks her yellow husband ^ hobo,' 
Hulking lizard oaf, garrobo. 
They, the gente,^ like his chops. 
And would get him where he drops, 
Fish him from the standing tide ; 
But the boat shall not abide. 
I am going up the black 
(Lago now four hundred back; ) 
Paddle, every noisy scamp, 
To the tarpaulins of camp ! 



22 THE canal:ero. the troopeb. 

Are they bad or are they boons, 
These thick river vine-festoons ? 
O'er their dense flame harsh macaws ; 
In them monkeys look and pause, 
Till they troll the roused remark 
Of their water- warble bark. 
Swinging fast from tree to tree 
Where not sitting haunch to see. 

On the Lajas this is life, 
Which can not be called but rife. 
There is armadillo, too, 
Whacks the brush he scuttles through. 
From a bank and basky naps 
In the alligator flaps — 
Eifle cocked, his eddy dog 
Where he sunk him like a log. 
But the lustiest of aught 
Is the fling of tiger-thought. 
Heard to shrill and seen to shake, 
Cascabel, the rattlesnake. 

POWDER AT RIVAS.21 

When Wilson was riding one day into Eivas, 
And we heard the firing, surveying afield, 

Unless his account and our hearing deceive us, 
The whole Revolution around him revealed. 

Observe — since the State was with old Doctor 
Cardenas, 

President now is Zelaya, by fear ; 
And the rebels (however this sweet land engarden us) 

Migrate between Costa Rica and here. 



THE CANALEEO. 23 

Costa Eica would like to push up to tlie lake 
And river, to share in the future canal ; 

So the beat Nicaraguans say cast with our stake, 
Help us back to our country again and you shall. 

And that is one reason the southwardly nation 
And northerer exiles forgather demure. 

The latter had banded, upon this occasion. 
That side of the border, and up by del Sur. 

They cleverly came by the road Chocolate* — - 
That as a detour — and so Wilson waylaid. 

The first thing he knew, in the midst of a party 
He reined, at the challenge of this cavalcade. 

"Pm of the Commission," he (red in his beard) 
Explained to their faces of families, — fine ; 

(For these were the sort of the blood and careered, 
Zelaya is red and here green was the sign. ) ^ 

*' 'Tis well ! " said the gentlemen. ^^ Come on with us. 

Today we take Eivas, and we'll see you in." 
And Wilson spurred on, although neutrally, thus, 

And so reached the works and the battle's begin. 

The wight sans-culottes and the dark caballero 
Eamroded his muzzle or led in the game. 

The most that I know is, that, straight as an arrow, 
They fought to the city through maiming and flame. 

The garrison's guns and the mutual volley 
We heard with surmisal, surveying afield ; 

Young Kent nearly cried, it was so melancholy 
To listen to war a,nd to stay like a chield. 



24 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

And what was the end of it ? Eivas retaken — 
Poor numbers thrown back by a multitude thugs. 

" But look, I will tell you my merriment's shaken — 
Those fellows look fools, they will fight though," 
said Bugs. 



UNKIND WHO LOST THE WOELD. 

At every finca or in every field 

Some careless-crippled, some accusing thing ; 

A dog one leg that carries, with a ring 
Of violent size a cow — the wound though healed j 
On every road an earless horse, or wealed ; 

In every town, some wretch of brutaling. 

What blood or being to betray these signs ? 

For is Iberian not sweet of heart ? 

Ay, and at home in many a friendly part. 
These people's smiles no falsity combines ; 
No need to read their features 'tween the lines ; 

We true, their real sincerity we start. 

Gentle and arch, and lazily good-willed. 

Their service, fellowship have nought to brand ; 
But this is so far as they understand, 

Their breast in pities is untaught or skilled ; 

They taste the grotesque in the halt and killed — 
Conceive no rule but the compulsive hand. 

You, Spain, — you in these foresters are seen, — '■ 
Were more divine of brain, of statelier mind 
Than ever my gross Saxo-Norman ^^ kind ; 



THE CANAL^EO. 25 

And you had had the world for your demesne, 
Against that rival, parr'd with you unclean, 
Were you not one way among Aryans blind. 

Ah, noble ! yet there was the wild Mahound, 
And you peninsula Europe like the Turk ! 
The scimitars your Christian underlurk, 

Which would reduce, not suade, whatever found. 

The ruder brood availed, more bowel-bound, 
Who after vanquishment let mercy work. 

No rag so royal ^^ ever rolled the stern, 

No fortresses frowned conquest — ramp and jut — 
So bold, so sovereign, as o'er every hut 
And sultry heave proclaimed, for man to learn, 
Your standards, castles, lording every bourne. 
That climes and waters wide were reigned. Oh, 
but 

Dominions, as your grandeur, made your shame ; 

You never shed the f ragrancy of sway ! 

Your subjugation turned slave-hearts away. 
While Britons cared for whom they overcame ; 
So all-illustrious as your knightly name. 

Cold was the soul of your victorious day. 

Bearing our Lord to Indian tides and here. 

You knelt each shore behind the priestly kilts ; 
And that was great ; but great were greed and 
guilt's ; 

Dearer than heaven was Eldorado dear. 

Befalling like dark angels — victors drear — 
Your most true cross was your Toledo hilts'. 



26 THE CANAL^BO. THE TROOPER, 

BAD SUNDAY. 

What use to me is this my life ? 
rd introvert a shot or knife, 
By which to cease or be away — 
Anght would be better than to-day. 
I rode, amid a million ills, 
Over, around, and through the hills. 
My mount was good, but yester-worn, 
And fagged at outset in the morn. 
Unbreakf asted I left the tent 
And spurred the colt already spent, 
Then at the manless Latin town 
Guzzled their knock-out coffee down ; 
Pegged from the place with many a drag 
Of bottle from the saddle-bag ; 
And next, when urging all I durst, 
That stirrup-strap at mid-sun burst ! 
This mended, while the heat in creeks 
E-unnelled and ran ail down my cheeks, 
'Twas on again — at last, good sake ! 
Reaching Byrne's canvas by the lake. 
And here was one good thing, I swear — 
His witty, working chief was there. 
And Byrne was genial — host at need — 
But dashed if I enjoyed the feed. 
I up and rode to Mr, Daw's, 
When his mechanic's spirits pause 
At my appearance ; lame hello's. 
And broke good-by's as I arose. 
So back to Byrne's ; and on his cot 
I smoked a black forget-me-not. 



THE CAN ALE RO. 27 

The Jew of Mr. Daw's turned up ; 
We had. to let him share our cup ; 
I didn't say so (as who would?), 
But I was glad it wasn't good. 
He town-ward now returning, too, 
Clubbed a sad gray till cursed it blue. 
Through and beyond my pony trode 
That broken rut, the royal road. 
With dust and sun and coming dark, 
And, if benighted, not a mark, 
His bleeding flank I had to spur 
To keep the failing beast astir. 
But, crossed the ford and plunged the bush, 
Up the last, longest hill we push ; 
Descend the river-bed, then o'er 
The bank, and into camp once more. 
And supper over ! All my bones 
Are sore as I had rolled on stones. 
I have some hard-tack, nothing canned. 
The nag won't eat — can hardly stand. 
Kerens why I think (upon my cot) 
That he and I were better shot. 
Camp Corralillos. 

EUBBER. 

Here's the uhle-tree,^ 

Where we hit the Tola ! 
Everywhere is wounded she ; 

Seldom seen, and sola ; 
Grown but forest-knee. 

* No telling when the Nicaraguans will or not pronounce the 
romance e as a last syllable. This is ooly. But they say pasa- 
por^ay — machete with either sound. 



28 THE CAN ALE RO. THE TEOOPEB, 

Solitude so dense 

Never gave her cover ; 
Far from trace of path or fence 
Tracks her the gold-lover, 

Hacks her innocence. 

At the Tola, see, 

More than one machete, 
High as limb let climbers free, 
Made the bark all fretty 

Of the little tree. 

Drips the merchant's mouth 

As the whale with blubber, 

For the creamy-white undrouth ^^ 

Eunning into rubber — 

Sound wealth of the South. 

Such sap yearly sold 

For nine dollars (each tree), 
Metamorphosis behold — 

Rubber turns a ^ peach '-tree I 

(Not these pesos — gold.) 

But, for thousand rows. 
Who'd be Nicaraguense ; 
Though he fostered out of those 
A fine competency, 

Full as fortune grows ? 

With a stately place, 
Belvederes, verandahs, 



THE CANALERO. 29 

As Don Soandso he'd grace 

Self and friends, as man does 
In so good a case ; 

But your robbers thieve 

From these fair plantations ; 
His domain he could not leave, 

Lest their depredations — 
If he did he'd grieve. 

Better wrought than curled, 

Life, than books and money. 
Some would seat them here, en-earled, 

Thinking one was funny 
Who preferred — the world. 

THEIR OWN PETARD. 

The same astounder — through the cooly sough 

Of high mahogany and mispero. 

Where men cry far and monkeys air away, 

And still the musky, sunless halls are lone ; 

The same torpedo struck us in the forest 

Which undertook the armorclad, and hove 

Her metal up before Havana. Trust 

At first we scantly gave the dangerous tale, 

Though let to winds from lightning of del Sur;* 

A Sunday's tidings brought by one returning 

From Rivas — an attentive camp he met. 

But still the story slow, remotely grew 

To our eleven, and then we hoped sure war. 

* The cable is at San Juan del Sur. 



30 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

" If we have honor," Swan said, " surely is 
Sure war." And Wilson, grinding, *^ It is sure, 
And rue to Spaniards without ruth in us. 
If they have been thus poisonous, at peace, 
We are humane, and we shall leave them as 
Men do leave any snake." 

Adjoined Nassau 
(Nassau, who — no one knows much how he thinks ; 
He holds respect with banter) — ^' For example. 
Like Kent's constrictor, killed this afternoon 
To keep his spottles ! " 

The part-Bourbon boy 
(If his house cousin to the Ancient throne), 
Kent, mentioned that he would go home — go home ; 
" And I will be a lieutenant in this war. 
My uncle's subaltern." Less laughed than looked 
Others, from their own minds. Pruden held out 
We might be in mistake, and Maine gone down 
From no prepense or Saracenic guile. 
But plain bad hazard. 

Kent, so keen though young, 
And cold though brave, had sailed to reach a sword, 
Were not that canalero engineer 
Felt sounder standing in career. It felt 
To most — there in the Tola camp and all. 
And homing days, I thought, would find run through 
Our quarrel with the Austrian regency 
(I'd plead with the sad Princess to serve her 
And son, if ever rise the claimant Charles) — 
I thought that peace would meet us at New York, 
And then New York be nothing ! Swan debated 
In cups : " I do not see the country's title 



THE CANALERO. 31 

To have a war, and I not in it." " So 
With me," yawned Wilson, sucking ugly pipes ; 
But he, as chief, heard no strong call to move. 
How build ourselves ? To war or where we were ? 
A sickle moon looked on the clearing down. 
Thus every man turned thinkings to the moon. 

THE NAEEIMBA.i« 

The slow blue serpent, the slight mouse-deer, 

And others which run and crawl, 
Hold up the head, the foot, to hear 

Geronimo's <After the Ball \ 

When night has closed down, and shadows dance 

Prom the cook's subsiding fire, 
The narrimba's * music infuses trance 

Through camp to the heart's desire. 

Our Nicaraguenses sit the ground. 

We pull at our pipes and gaze, 
The eternal trees engloom around, 

Geronimo does the lays. 

That Indian, shrewd with the forest-ken, 
Was made to make greenwood mirth. 

The happiest cutter in any ten — 
A tan Robin Hood by birth. 

None so well beats from the gourded keys 

Some barbarous, eerie bars 
As gay Geronimo plays to these 

In the flicker beneath the stars. 

* It is narreemba and Herommo. 



32 THE CANALEBO. THE TBOOPEB. 

What camp, of ye canaleros here, 
Has nights such as Espinal ! 

With a brisk narrimba clinking clear 
At evening carnival ? 

ENGINEEEIJSTG AND CAMPAIGN. 

The criticism has been expressed 
That the most military one 
Of the professions 
Is the engineer's; 
But Mr. Whyte (who's of the best 
In this, and sees his contract done) 
Makes no concessions 
That the thing appears. 

" Take me, am I a fighting man ? 
Besides we do constructive work, 
And war's destructive — 
Where's the likeness, then ? " 
And yet he forms, then drives his plan ; 
In rain and sun, through mud and mirk ; 
From unseductive 
Camps. So Mars ! Again, 

Surely 'tis the imperfect view 

Their ruin most in arms to see ; — 
Why, engineering 
Havoc first employs. 
The soldier is constructive, too ; 
He is, of power and policy j 
Which are appearing 
After he destroys. 



THE CANALJEBO. 33 



THE QUITTEK CAMP. 

I shall hit at the end — my refrain. 

Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac.* 

When I left Camp El Pavon, 

I my fellows' heart who miss, 
The men loved me — made it shown. 

I was moved — am proud of this. 

With my countrymen — rebuff, 

Take and give, is what I'm at. 
They hate me, when felt enough. 

I am also proud of that. 



NICANOE. 

Going by a finca's door. 
Out there came old Nicanor ; 

Where some pigs and people pen, 
He the captain of the men. 

Pallid, he had bound his head, — ' 
Had somewhat of fever, said. 

" Do you go, Senor Belknap ? " 
Asked he, as 'twere heavy hap. 

" You don't know what liking, plenty, 
Stays behind you in the gente." 

* Or see Mansfield. 



34 THE CANALJ^EO. THE TROOPER. 

Was it true ? And I shook hands 
Where the low up-looker stands. 

Bad his yellow face to see ; 
Woodland- wise, with dignity. 

« Of your calentura mend. 

Mind of me. Farewell, my friend.'^ 

Backward by the finca door — 
Pointy-hatted IfsTicanor. 



"HWANG." 

A GAT enough rider, I, 
On the day after Christ did die, 
On the road out of Eivas bent ; 
Through the mango arcades I went ; 
For I on that day was free, 
And I had friends by the sea.® 
By night I should reach their camp, 
At Brito and mangrove-swamp. 
My thoughts and my rein were loose. 
I mused — " There is Vera Cruz ; 
111 diverge and see that town, too, 
For one Brito road goes through." 
I beg to report, one did. 
And earth of the place, God rid ! 
Hm. Leaving the highway, on 
By the general west of the sun, 
And the right cross-road, this brought 
Soon in sight the roofs I sought. 



THE CANALEBO. 35 

On a hill the houses piled, 
Of ground-hue and white, red-tiled. 
I climbed the ascending street. 
And there — at the thing I meet — 
In front of a clean cuartel — 
I thought I was caught in hell ! 
The children and pigs at play 
Por me further bedazed the day. 
At the building the soldiers lolled, 
Their low eyes upon me rolled ; — 
Some others were swarth and mean 
And drunk at a near canteen. 

I certainly had no choice 
But to steady my heart and voice. 
I rode to the noisy, and 
To Brito the way demand. 
(0 God! that I, of all dolts, 
Had a forty-four gripsome Colt's !) 
They staggered and signed the road, 
I passed with my horror-load. 
But ere quit of this Vera Cruz 
I crost one of our men — Jesus.* 
Oh, I spoke with a careless air : 
*' Jesus, is that, back there, 
An actual man, in the tree ? " 
And he nodded up to me . . 
"An enemy ? '' I suppose ; 
"One of the republic's foes ? " 
He returned that the corpse was " Hwang,'' f 
(Like a strange, struck Chinese gong !) 

* HeysMce. t His pronunciation of some Juan. 



36 THE CANALJSBO. THE TROOPER. 

" A puro, Jesiis, for you, 
And I will my ride pursue." 

Well, then, and how would yon feel, 
Well horsed, with silver, nO steel ? 
And I had, like a wild fool, 
Named my road in that devirs-school ! 

In a jungle cul-de-sac 
I lost time — what was worse, my track. 
Through a gentle farmer I find 
Again this, and I looked behind. 
The afternoon dwindled fast — 
Vague distance yet to be passed. 
I inquire, where some fincas are. 
With the answer the camps still far. 
But good to my ear the dirge 
Stole faint of Pacific surge. 
That night I was glad to be 
With Americans by the sea. 

What if, in the dangled tree, 
Was but Judas in effigy ? 
This hanging the people do. 
The Passion Week helping through ; 
Yet why did Jesus say " Hwang," 
And the son of a woman, swung ? 
I thought (war rumoring nigh) 
It was Costa Eica's spy. 
— However, you have the whole ; 
And I had a trepid soul. * 

* The apparition was nothing but the dummy, for the Nicara- 
guans never hang. The fact learned later. 



THE CANALS BO. 37 



MISS AND THE REPUBLIC. 

Granada ' of this pseudo-Spain — in glamours of your 

day 
Moulders a ruin, where the sun so ha^amers with the 
ray, 
And through a window of that roofless palace 
A lady is seen, as in a picture-frame ; 
'Tis as if in some old chalice 
New California came. 



For she is young and incomplete and present, like the 

wine; 
And that is why I wonder — so senescent is the vine. 
Are then her race's hope and heart so tombless 
That it can flower so brightly, lightly now ; 
In a girl whose soul seems gloomless, 
By her Castilian brow ? 

Gray, not ungrand Granada, there are clashes in your 

page; 
Spain ages, but can your breast share the ashes of her 
age? 
Though young, and flung here when her prime was 
splendid. 
Even in her child does her blood waste, — so old, — 
Nor let the fate be shended, 

The born career grow bold ? 



38 THE CAN ALE BO. THE TEOOPEB. 

Whatever of Iberian crumble work within your piles, 
Though lean of Eome in hoary dome do mumble with 
dead smiles, 
If mother Spain, your sire — the West — gave to you 
The strengthy strain to raise you to renown ; 
But you do not renew you, 

Or cast your despot down. * 

Still would my hope and reason cope with sloth to which 

you cling. 
Let other die, new birds must fly and should inspire a 
spring. 
'Tis your own daughter stands by the broke rafter — 
Stands by the tilted stone — a girl so white j 
Her lips and eyes are laughter, 
Her forehead is but bright. 

* This is Zelaya's style : The President the General don Joa6 
Santos Zelaya, of Nicaragua. It is said of Mr. Zelaya that much 
of his extortionate misgovernment is inspired by his shrewd and 
ruthless associate, General Gamez. I do not believe it, or that 
Zelaya is capable in any measure of being an underling. There 
are the cynical doubts whether the Mcaraguans have not in this 
autocrat the government they deserve, and whether another chief 
would not be weaker and therefore worse. Probably Zelaya is no 
more an unprincipled man than a good one ; he knows that the 
circumstance in which he finds himself needs a master and affords 
perquisites. Of one thing I am certain, that I am giving him a 
good deal of attention. I saw Gamez, called to the soldiery at a 
juncture of the Costa Kican emergency ; he was a flaccid sick man 
up from a sick-bed and did not look like a determined one, — an 
important rascal, — perhaps on that account. "^ 



THE CAN ALE BO. 3& 



PHILOSOPHY AT SAN CAELOS. 

Here in jour hammock as I smoke and swing. 

All day not doing, Howard, a damned thing, 

I recollect a sight near a back door 

When my crowd made up to this place before. 

We know the clime here — heaven knows! — and 

the dim 
Purpose, the soul supine, and unnerved limb ; 
The suns, to which man has to be resigned, 
Though inextinguishable is the mind. 
I will be short, and you the moral reap ; 
What I surveyed was a dead-bottle heap. 
So much of spirit signed as fled from here 
Would make you wish we had some ice and beer. 
But what it meant was this, it seemed to me : 
Here man, with his immortal energy, 
Peels it to stir, which never can arise ; 
And so he drinks in dreaming where he lies ; 
And in those shards he piles into the air 
He builds the monument of this despair. 

QUO' HE! 

Such people as you see in these hybrid climes ! 

This man, in the meanest of San Juan river-boats, 
Knows something of strategy, and knows Omar's rhymes. 

And wears in this heat (oh. Lord !) his one, two coats. 

With a slovenly person, I cannot call him tramp, 
The man has read more Greek than I ever will ; 

I think that some broken texts he could revamp. 
To tell his race would puzzle a Sludge's skill. 



40 THE CANAL^EO, THE TROOPER. 

A Nicaragua!! major opines that " He 

May be a Eussian — a Cuban — half -Turk — a Czech/^ 
So he may — or a spy from the southward he may be. 

He wears no cravat ; is gray, but not old — a wreck. 

He talks of artillery with a tongue not clear, 

Like no glib fool who knows not whereof he prates ; 

He broods the canal with the eye of an engineer 
Who thinks of the crucial inch at Ochoa gates. 

The same he shows the acquaintance of courtesy. 
Without the habit. He mopes in the second-class. 

He holds with the ribald tales of gallantry, 

And in any place might pass — with experience pass. 

Thus notable a specimen traveling, 

He hardly, I guess, would have moved my minstrelsy, 
Had not the frayed cosmopolite dropped this thing, 

An Italian feeling of English poetry ! 

Apparently in all languages something strong. 
He delivered this out of Anglo-Saxon's clutches: 

<< What is that an Italian says of English song ? — 
That it is a fire, which blackens all it touches." 

What criticism ! — I wince at the Latin's truth. 

So that's what they think of Will, or of Wordsworth's 
length ? 
But I believe that — so rude — is ours the youth ; 
They sweet subside, but we burn with the hope and 
strength. 

I thank them, nevertheless, and the nondescript 

(And where and by whom may not a mind be taught ? 

Into whole new seeings by one stray fancy tripped), 
Eor a metaphor one of the truest ever thought. 



THE CAN ALE BO. * 41 

SOME MOEE OF DUNDAS VACIL. 

III. 

Boca Colokado. 

Were there a vessel steaming down a tide, 

A narrow, speeding iron engine-realm, 
And slie by a side current should be guyed, 

God help her of her helm ! 
A cry at falling is in vain no more 
Than the dead rudder — See the hulk ashore! 

Or else, take her black brother of the lands, 

And fancy, if he went on a false track 
Far through a Eussia, ere he understands, 

Nor coal to feed him back ; 
Upon the bare plain gray would be that day, 
For how might he return to the right way ? 

I know not which I more resemble. Those 

Are like enough, as in or near their fate ; 

And I have kept the course I first mischose, 

Until, it seems, too late ; 
Or, on impelled by a despairer's cheer, 
I soon should match the ship that got the sheer. 

Say that the trampler held some fuel still : 

Ketreat ? a cross-line build ? Too far ; too long. 
Or found the hull, within the eddy's will, 
'Twas short — she shot, was strong 
With steering way once more — Well, of my tropes. 
This is the happiest one of heavy hopes. 



42 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

If I could have, if I did have, an one, — 

TJian whom none lightly fairer there may be,-~ 
I think — for all I've done, and never done, 

You would recover me. 
My single love ! To me, in any hour, 
Your memory on me is the reigning power ! 

My anger rose, and is the selfsame yet; 

That and an ocean part me from you still ; 
But what am I, whose heart will not forget — 

Wild horses in its will ? 
There is no day before me but the one 
I shall possess you, or have done — have done. 

^Tis bitterer to tread these lonely ways, — 

And such, I read, another man has seen, — 
^ The while thy feet through pleasure's careless maze 

Straying have brightly been ; ' ^ 
My head young graying, following you girl, 
The far-off flitter of a ribboned whirl. 

Life says we must not wait for what we lack, 

But I am tired and list not what arrives ; 
Surround me whitely, for the world is black, 

Nor honor all survives ; 
The only sphere whencef orth this man can fare 
Is love's — which is not, with my love not there. 

Oh ! not complaining, but it is the pain ; 
Less that you care not than I do require ! 



* BouRKE Devenish, A Prayer. A poem in a magazine. 



THE CANAL^RO. 43 

ly. 

Heart and Manhood. 

Brood on your wrongs from her you may, some moment 

you will start, 
First taken by the brightest revelation of the heart ; 
The sun disclouds, and doubts and gloom and fever are 

no more ; 
'Tis only love that matters — and dashes all before ! 

What, when the -life is guided in the bridle of high- 
mind, — 

Half to prefer right worth to her, — to sue her ever 
blind ! 

To leave the lance a-leaning and to dandle of a glove Z^ 

'Tis honor sternly matters, and shall ride him over love. 

VIGOR AT TAMBOE GEANDE. 

All the men who come, Lloyd Kneely, 

From your energetic camp. 
Mention forcibly and freely 

That the place is devilish damp. 

When you walk on solid treading 

You are oozing in the rains ; 
Wading when there is none shedding, 

Comes the sun and beats your brains. 

It's no fault of yours, Lloyd Kneely, 

Is a torrid drench and brass ; 
But a push so steam or steely — 

It will bring you to a pass ! 



44 THE canal:ero. the trooper. 

" Kneely takes his battered transit 
And submerges througb the stream. 

Out of water sun-rays glance it, 
And the quetzals fly and scream." 

Your canoes come down the river, 
Peopling Hospital La Fe, 

Full of fellows with the shiver 
And the swamp legs they display. 

You've a spirit that is brandy, 

Though you mess on salt and soak. 

Keep it up at Tambor Grande, 
You can boast the hardy joke. 

What ! but it is over-hearty, — 
Wisely, man, your verve remit ; 

As you're thinning out your party, 
You will be the end of it. 

For no engineer or mozo^^ 

Can support a speed so prone ; 

And your number — if they go so, 

Kneely'll break the swamps alone. 
La Fe. 

YEAR AFTER YEAR. 

The Pebble. 

I FOUND a pebble 
Upon a strand, 
Which I wished that you 
Would admire with me. 



THE canaliSro. 46 

But I grew a rebel ; 
You'd not understand. 
The pebble I threw — 
It lies in the sea. 

Or Whose Heart? 

There is no escape ; 
I see a shape 
In the sand, under spray 
Of a southern sea. 
A strange-indeed 
Withered Heart-form seed. 
Did I throw one away ? 
Here it is for me. 



SHIPBOAED. 

I. Sea by Shore. 

Presh away for bright Puert' Limon — 

Crested welter steamer-overflown ! 

Now down Nicaragua, and a-south 

Costa Eica^ waives her haven mouth.^ 

At Limon, the still screw's stern-spray drips* 

Off prosperity of shore and ships. 

* There was some scold in the Atlantic, I think so remotely as 
the editorship of Mr. Aldrich, somewhat like this: "As Mr, 
Browning beautifully observes, 

♦ The barrel of blasphemy broached once, who bungs ? ' " 
Who, indeed ? But my only point is to defend my ugly line, 
supra, behind the cacophony of Browning's. 

"Better to err with Pope than shine with Pye.'* 



46 THE CANAL^EO. THE TEOOPEB. 

Who need ask tlie denizen what's here ? 
Dark cacao, coffee finely dear — 
All that bold Zelaya shuts or keeps 
Costa Eica's freedom bales and heaps ! 
Heavy fruitage dights the quay in piles ; 
They will darkle, then unlade their smiles. 
There is one flag floating Humbert's green ; 
Germans, an American careen. 
— Much I marvel at the zones, their stocks; 
Eairy countries, with romantic docks, 
These it is that yield the drugs and dyes, 
These the irons, strengths of merchandise. 
With the balms the packet too may part, 
But she ploughs the tiger to the mart. 
Raging and the raptures are co-born, — 
Woman ! love is tender and is torn ; 
All the soul is sunny in one mouth, 
Yet that sky has lightning — So the South. 
Ne'er we dwell the palm or placid wave 
But the soft air dreams a sudden grave. 
Look you on the balsam jungle tree. 
And its luxury you smell and see ; 
Bid the mozo, loath, to his attacks. 
And you spend the day besides the axe. 
Pibre-hard is every Central stem. 
Black tobacco vies in might with them. 
Mocha- Java's power of fragrant brown 
Lessens to the berry here-adown — 
East and Arab — which the Turk outdo 
(In his cup), as equatorial too. 
Concentrated bean — cacao's rich 
Feeds the frame in little ; many a pitch 



THE CANALERO. 47 

Tastes fell poison ; deep their colors deal 
Indigo, and the bright bug cochineal. 
In the grosser climes the fine is spun — 
Ilards and potents from the softest sun. 



Knowlton leaned upon the landward rail, 
Telling through a Nicaraguan tale ; 
Knowlton, redolent of miners' ills 
Up above the Momotombo hills. 
There in Nicaragua where they bore 
For the beaming, as the argent, ore, 
Often do the drills — the miner so 
Said, with anger — do the drills stand wo ! 
" An impressing troop, for some new fight 
Comes and takes my gente in the night ; 
And the mine reft of a working band. 
What can an American command 
Of redress ? Consul or Washington 
Notes the evil, lets the evil run- 
Not upon a Briton's mine they trench. 
Or of France — the most prestige is French. 
Matagalpa, our States colony,^^ 
Where we are in numbers — that is free. 
But the last time — for I saw them then — 
Shadov/ers ! — they luent hy my shacks and men. 
This, this is my right and my appeal " — 
In his hand he showed the chambered steel. 
Country would not serve, except to start 
Very tears from a wronged man of heart. 

Certes, insult we have met, nor whirled 
Force there, is one wonder of the world. 



48 THE CANAL^BO. THE TROOPEB. 

, Merchants know — the navy, nations know • 
What the Shafted capital lets go. 

Oh, no more the anchor or the lead — 

Once again the bounding bows ahead ! 

II. Looks in the Wijstd. 
I. 

That lady thought of me 
With the most natural girlish 
Pique, because I didn't see 
(As she supposed) 
' That she disclosed 
A means to rhyme 
Away the time — 
A truth with which I quite agree. 
Most men on deck were certainly 
Less churlish. 

I have my reasons for 
Avoiding a light fetter ; 
Though I say I did deplore 
Her error that 
My heart is Jflat. 
But now I bear 
Tor her no care ; 
She my approach had hailed before. 
But she has grown me to abhor. 
That's better ! 

II. 

It always was so : 
Howe'er you avoid 



THE CAN ALE RO. 49 

A beauty to know, 

Your rest is destroyed. 
I fought at a distance, and fell; 
This morning I live in the spell. 

III. 

I can't interest this young woman, 

She may go to the pretty deuce. 
Cares not even to be inhuman. 

Finish the voyage, for where is the use \ 

III. EOLLING. 

Something has struck us in the steam, 

And lame upon a lazy ocean 
We loll in breeze and drift abeam. 

Exclaim by turns and feel Boeotian. 

I've apathy and pencil here 

To pass the equal leaden hour. 
I mind me of the late half-year. 

While comes and clears a squally shower. 

From days of bush and nights of wet 
I've turned me worn but careless home j 

From no much-noted life, and yet 

What I have drawn one wisdom from. 

Strange that the decades nearly mine, 
Whose sum begins to warp most men 

Down to the world, had failed align 
Myself with their experience then ;. 



50 THE CANALERO. THE TUOOPEB. 

But six months of the sunken South 
Have rooted for me from the core 

One pain that used to draw my mouth. 
And seasoned me as not before. 

This — from abrasion of the camp, 
From man the soul and animal, 

From middle sun and forest damp — 
I bring at least this capital : 

The stranger's glance and word aside, 

The comment scarce mis-heard of friends. 

To treat as they did not betide, 
And not to speculate their trends. 

It is the course we need observe, 
The course which now I find I can, 

And enter with an easy nerve 
In talk wherever gathers man. 

^Tis not so hard (so habit finds) 
To keep out of the consciousness 

What may be said — which never binds 
The subject of the arrant guess. 

But what is hard, and where I learn 
Me weak as most are, is to make 

No sign what I think I discern, 
Lest others I myself mistake. 

— " Oh, there ! '' Mercedes says, and shades 
Her gazing with a sunlit hand. 

And there, two sea-smokes trailed the Trades, 
Close by the cliffy Cuban land. 



THE CANALEBO. bl 

( Yon little craft, unfold tlie war, 
And why so swift ye hug the coast ! 

Mine or Alfonzo's ? Hunted ? or 

On merchant chase, to do your boast ?) 

— On Kingston's English tide there lay 

A long old carrier of the foe, 
Biding and iron, briny gray, 

Keeping her cover, or to go. 



DUNDAS. 
V. 

Signless. 
II. 

What floivers of blue — 
And hrilliant, too — 
Can I ever send to you! 

— Ah ! that old line 

I did design. 
When I had a thought for mine^ 

Which held you far 

Its viewless star. 
Where the Cross was radiar. 

My memory — • 

Where sea and sea 
Did divide and desolate me. 

Eut no more near, 

Kow home and here, — 
Oh, the vain, unyielding year ! 



62 THE CANAL^EO. THE TROOPER. 

The empty door, 

As long before ; 
Still to vf ear unrest I wore ; 

Still to repine, 

Like that old line 
Where the palm and plantain shine. 



EOME — AND ENGL AND — NEXT 'TIS THOU. 

Scene : The Nicaraguan Canal — two oceans observed. 
fPflRSONS : A lady ; Destiny ; a few Fleets. 

Yes, dear, you must stand on that. 
But ifs narrow as a slat / 

Never mind, dear, take your fate. 
Ifs my ocean-ocean gate ? 

Of all kinds of use to you. 

Here they come — what shall I do ? 

They vyill come, they will not stay. 
They want Trie to go away. 

Never mind, dear, stand you there ; 
Only say a little prayer. 



Yes, they petulantly meet 
With concussion near her feet. 

They the sharp and swanny ships, 
With the trouble at their lips. 

As their anxious friends are found 
Let them lash out lightning round. 



THE CANALERO. 53 

Let them shortly strow the flood, 
Let them sweet the salt with blood. 

Let them limp, as they will do 
While they crack the others too. 

— When yet half are riding on, 
When the others are all gone, 

Let Columbia, standing there, 
Pin her cycle in her hair. 



CRUDE METAL. 

I can sneer at a pair of spurs, 

Of the silver kind of shine, 
Which spent the speed of a puny steed 

On the roads of the Tola line. 

And a heavier pair I hold ; 

'Tis cavalry they were for ; 
But their solid brass is unmeaning mass, 

For they never were worn in war. 

They may dangle their rowels four, 
And all of the four are none. 

My heart avers that I have no spurs. 
And the devil a spur I won. 



THE TROOPER. 



Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them 
Printing their proud hoofs i' the receiving earth." 

— Prologue to King Henry V. 



NOTE. 

*' Prescott H. Belknap, a member of Colonel Roosevelt's Rongli 
Riders, who has lately returned . . ., states that personally lie 
fared well, and lie appears to have no cause for complaints which 
others have made regarding their welfare. Mr. Belknap . . . was 
one of the men who were left behind when the expedition was made 
to Cuba, and he remained at Tampa, where he had the care of 
several horses. He states that others who were left in Florida 
were bitterly disappointed at not having a chance to fight. Mr, 
Belknap states that there was no malaria in camp, notwithstand- 
ing the many assertions which have been made of its presence 
there, and the fact that large numbers have succumbed to its effect 
from their experiences in camp at Montauk." — Boston Evening 
Transcript, September 20, 1898. 



THE TROOPER. 



THE DEATH EOEEFIGUEED. 

Were I of worth in battle, once annealed, 
More cold than generous my pulse would be, 
For I believe my fate would be my shield, — 
That there is not mortality for me. 
But in another kind of furious field. 

When I have struggled by green gurgle bound. 
The vivid serial past whirled through my brain, 
I less have apprehended to be drowned 
Than deemed me elsewhere due the final pain. 
Not in the climes the sun flies raging round 

He strikes me to the soil, though dizzying ; 
Where swum I the lagoon, the jungle thrid. 
Passing the sharp shark and toboba's sting. 
Nor may the Eome of life's red army bid 
In tumult bid — my spirit to the wiog. 

That heart, though concoursed more than well it can, 
Would beat to dream, if e'er such storm below 
As whitens at this hour on waif and man, 
A friend would find me through Siberian snow — 
Some Cossack kind, a strange Samaritan. 
63 



64 THE GANALJ^BO. THE TROOPER. 

In conflict safe, give me for blood remorse 
As fever, too, need, ocean I survive. 
In other guise the agonizing force 
On my last strength will rushingly arrive, 
Portended, where I perish by a horse. 

Por life, in hazard's access, be there room 
For twinkling vision and resolve to cope ! 
But when the time full sees the scar of doom 
Let me look straight and shut my teeth to hope, 
Taking destruction's flashing lapse to gloom. 



THE LAST OF YACIL. 
YI. 

One, Ones. 

Oh ! affinity — 

That is fair ; 
But a soul must be 

Ceasing care 
When the other will 

Not respond. 
Giving all for nil, 

Where's the bond ? 

Even devotion must 

Have its coin ; 
Feel return and trust 

It rejoin. 



THE TROOPER. 65 

Who repeats a kiss 

On the dead ? 
Or to live, nor this 

Eaise her head ? 

Ay ; and what a change ! 

To have burned 
Into ashes strange, 

Though unurned. 
What is in the gaze 

Of your eyes, 
Now, that their same rays 

I despise ? 

Should you see me more, 

Do not look 
On the one you wore, 

Shent, and shook; 
Do not raise the old 

Scorned desire ; 
Spare yourself the cold 

Ice of ire. 

You are unf orgot — 

N^ever mine ! 
Through the common lot 

Lies my line. 
O'er my sea you crost — 

Lone the sea. 
I knew love and lost — 

Quit you me ! 



66 THE CANALEEO. THE TBOOPEB. 

VII. 
One Alone. 

When there is only one, 
And that dream doubts, is dreaded, and then done, 
And ^tis no more the heart-break of a boy, 

How, love, you do destroy ! 

The clearness of the brow 
Is gone. That may be little to avow ; 
But the fine faith in deeper life departs. 

And voids the heart of hearts. 

The sun has left the sea, 
Where now all leaden, sullen billows be : 
The friendly land, the past, is foreign, blind ; 

Hkted, and left behind ! 

THE INFANTRYMAN FEOM SAVANNAH. 

Thank God for grace — Upon the evening first 

I entered rutty Tampa, carelessly 

Alone among the townsmen, and yet more 

In army peaked sombrero, J passed all ; 

Looking into the light beside, to choose 

A comely dining-room, if such there were ; 

And such was none — but somewhere I sat down. 

Soon afterward another took his place, 

In uniform. 

May I trouble you to pass 
The pepper ? 



TSE TROOPER. 67 

So, one having spoken once, 
We had a conversation of an hour. 
A plain-faced fellow, most like Maryland,^* 
In part, — and that is mild, with somewhere fire ; 
The one Savannah gentleman, I think, 
I ever chanced, — of Georgia's Second foot. 
Myself designed to troop with Eoosevelt, he 
Deliberately drawled, as he explained 
How our two camps might promise for the front : 
Eye-musing here and there, with what he said, 
His hopes' horizon burst be-flied four walls. 
When we walked out we waited for his car. 
We were fair company that hour of grace, 
Mind intimate, and yet reserved as two. 
We inclined and turned without each other's name. 

Two chips afloat, which by a chance attract 
And pause together, then as lightly part. 
I wonder if that man and I, awide. 
Soon shake upon Bellona's common sea. 

RABBLE THINKINGS OF A GOOD OEFICER.i^ 

"The old, undying feud of blackguard against gentleman." 
Theodore Winthrop, The Canoe and the Saddle. 

It is the penalty of praise to wake 

The murmur the unwilled and worthless make. 

The rankest fog hugs on the stillest fen, 

The foulest thought fumes o'er the marsh of men. 

Why cannot honor, like the armored sun, 

Look down and lance away the unrolling dun ? 

Because the lurking cloud reeks not so high 

As e'er to meet the lance of honor's eye ! 



68 THE CAN ALE RO. THE TEOOPEE. 

THE PEAISE OF THE NAG. 

I. Dawn's-Token. 
I. 

At boatswain-shrill the hammock's wight 
Swings down to deck a frowsy start ; 

In hollow streets the end of night 

Sounds with the milkman's early cart. 

And monkeys, in far southern ears, 
Crash long before the forest day ; 

And Rocky birds, when dawning nears, 
Foretell it hunter and his prey. 

Ay, has each sort his morning sign — 

A visitation or a call. 
So listen, I will tell you mine, 

The most romantic one of all. 

II. 

When I, at midnight's turn of tide. 
Am waked to watch and walk till day ; 

Relief, have left my friend to bide 
Rolled up upon his bale of hay. 

Drowsing with one mate more, whom next 
I shake the shoulder, come his hour — 

When I to be disturbed was vexed, 
But now have pleasure of my power : 



THE TROOPER. 69 

I round my ninety jfards of rope 

And bless my babies where they stand 

(What noble slumber !), or I cope 

With some estray, with hay-filled hand. 

The silly stroller caught, or cursed 
A light-heeled, wilful breaker-' way, 

I do not care. I know that, first. 
My work is trusty, great, and gay. 

I laugh to any painful fool, 

This starry toil is worth the wear ; 
And, master in horse and woman's school, 

All life were splendorous and fair. 

A few my babies on their flanks 

Sleep sometimes, like less nervous men. 

A head's turn, brushing nose is thanks 
Tying one fellow up again. 

I went up to the cooky's fire 

For water cool in Tampa night. 
I smelt mamita's salts, denier 

A soldier should be shot at light. 

But what was that ? 



III. 

The broncos cough ! 
Upon the palette of the east 
No color yet, but 'tis enough 
To take me to my line of beast. 



70 THE CANALEliO. THE TROOPER. 

' With couglis in my line, then there broke 

More — spirited — from M to here.'^ 
Horse-guards ! you hear them ; they disehoke, 
And now the morning must be near. 

For subtle, newer breath than night 
These stirrers in their gullets feel. 

Ere one Eoan break of bright 

They wake and shake, they bite and squeal. 



II. Tempest. 



*' The weather lias a wonderful effect on troops : in action and 
on the march rain is favorable." 

General Shekman, Personal Memoirs, Ch. XVII. 



How in the tents, old marshal ! 
When Thunder vaults in his car, 
And his steeds advance of the blighting glance, 
And he drives them, roaring far? 

Ernest from horse-line made 
For a vacant tent his dash ; 
In the firmament's Babel took to the table, 
On which he was wet with splash. 

Terribly gay the rate 

Of these thunderstorms coming down I 
They dazzle and detonate. 

And a private is killed in town.^ 



THE TROOPER. 71 

Pandemonium's laughter, 
Or an anger of High God ! 
But we go to Tampa after — 

No sleeping on this swamped sod."* 

"Well could the major order 

For the animals some such care," 
Said Ernest, who was their warder. 
And looked from the table there. 

Now is the horse in malice, 

And our brutal boots, too, kick. 
We move the strand where he can stand 
Out of water, proudly sick. 

Ernest says there are trees, — 
A line of poplars they, — 
Which, in a perpetual breeze. 

Have learned to lean back, away. 

Poplars of Charlesgate stand 
A column before the sun ; 
When autumn-attainted, the foremost painted, 
They grade to a last green one. 

Pictures that will not do ! 

Like a string of fish the troop : 
A line of mane against the rain 
Will forwardly, sadly stoop. 

* The commanding officer was twice obliged to the extreme 
order for the men to pass the night where they could. Some did 
in the fodder cars, others more gaily in Tampa. 



'72 THE CANALEBO. THE TBOOPEE, 



THE TAMPA-LEAGUER. 

Tried little Tampa ! taxed in each resource, 
Till roofs unwonted feel of simple need ; 

Eeviled unfaithful, being o'erpowered with coarse 
Immense demander more than you can meed : 

But it bewrays what were right siege's harms, 

When you, surrounded by no alien arms, 
Endure their friendliest breed as such afflictive force. 

Clean is the man, but not his monstrous mass ; 

The loyal city kind, till dearth with throng ; 
And here (unfortunate !) it comes to pass 

These Mars and merchants speak each other wrong; — 
Whereof there bawls and brawls the baser press. 
Though all the country's ill should render less. 
But camps, when they are strong, all civic cause outclass. 

Besides unvictualled, see the hapless town 
In vast lone windows of her burgh Ybor, — 

Or ' Hobo city ' soldiers call it down, — 

Where the cigar now nearly makes no more. 

Some few panes liven, where the buildings breast, 

But signing Tampa and a trade distressed ; 
Havana held in war, we light few leaves fine-brown. 

Suppose you never heard, then thus they tell 
One curious life, once noted at Key West, — 

Key West, where self -said fishermen — the swell 
Sailed out — come back with f umible the best. 

The customs cutter scorns so small and vile. 

But little mainsails Cuba raise soon-while ; 
And, on return addressed, bear weed v/hich selleth well. 



THE TROOPER. 73 

Howbeit cockle smugglers^ I relate 

The man Tobacco-reader. Do we think 

The twisters of cigar preserve their rate 

Ten hour, unaided lest they drowse or wink ? 

Know that a newspaper and novel leads 

Their lickings, as tobacco-reader reads ; 
And him they pay their pink — a purse above their state. 

Now neither he nor are the craftsmen here, 

Where Tampa beggars for the strong supply ; 
And, marking other manufacture drear, 

Some naked stacks mar smokelessly the sky. 
When, though the town so poor, comes far and wide 
This Tampa-leaguer, on the level side : 
A city gaunt of eye pressed by encampments near. 

Yet blame nor regiment nor citizen. 

Stint in the streets, sick toil is in the tent ; 
The town but can contrive some crowded den, 

Where blueboy finds but hardest merriment. 
But (thanks to God !) the soldier shortly scorns 
The vicious penny-a-liner, whom he warns. 
Pear not. Sir President ! the army be true men. 

CLAEK, OF THE SAl^TIAGO CAPTAINS. 

On the verses understood to have been sent by Mr. R. 
Kipling, with works of Mr. Kipling's, to Captain R, D. 

Evans, U. S. N. 

What, here is the Kipling — sailor too ! 

You are doing the world's desert : 
A Jungler cheer, a jingle-eer. 

And a battleship expert ! 



74 THE CANALI^EO. THE TROOPER, 

But your books are a great deal better 
Than the stumbling stanzas scan ; 

Write Evans a prettier letter, 
As you have a hand that can. 

And do it or not, but if you do — 

It won't hurt Evans at all — 
Find out what captain the fleet looks to 

To bandy the battle-ball. 

Not all is said of the Gloucester, 

On the bridge where Wainwright scowled ; 

The vice of the Maine — he lost her 
In peace, ere the shells yet howled. 

The rifles of Indiana — 

The first, though by all sped by — 

Spoke loud and late, and pointed straight, 
To be true as Taylor's eye. 

And Philip fought the Texas, 

l^OT Evans but fed the shark ; 
The pennant let fly ten thousand shy ,2^ 

But doubled the Spaniards Clark ! 

At least it is so they say who know. 

And saw that Sunday morn. 
And the Oregon to Cervera run 

As she ran around Cape Horn.^ 

* The impersonal manner in which the exploits of the Oregon 
are spoken of popularly is astonishing. What a man is, such is 
his house. What a commander is, such is his command. The 
"Rough Riders" were their brilliant colonel. To say "the 
Oregon'''' is to pronounce the synonym name of Captain Charles 



THE TBOOPEB. 75 

Nor Clark is the first man silent 

Where fame was exchanged for fudge. 

And this was the thought the navy caught, 
And they are the Jacks to judge. 

Your decks, good fellow, recall their worth - - 

Thence British glories rise ! 
You're the only breed on the face of the earth 

That tells to itself no lies. 



How ceaselessly things glide, like thieves, my head, — 

Most unrelated things, — 

Powers, forms, imaginings ; 
Their course by strange extraneous spirit led — 

Nov?, winding on his wings. 

This morning muses back to yesterday, 

And my head-hearings hark 

To one met half in dark ; 
A sudden girl, warm porcelain more than clay. 

Then — comes the rushing Clark ! 

The girl : a slender willow which is straight ; 

A voice which, harsh sometime, 

Chooses for me to chime ; 
Brown eyes, which know my blood will not abate, 

And steps with mine which rhyme. 

Clark. At the Atlantic port Clark had to put into, on his way 
to Admiral Sampson, his chief engineer came to him and said : 
"Captain, you will have to give me a full week here to get the 
engines in form again." "We are going," Clark told him, "to- 
morrow morning." The engineer may be an excellent officer, but 
Captain Clark is an historical commander. His work is text-book 
of his profession. 



76 THE CANAL^RO. THE TBOOPEB. 

So I recalled her. 

But she was expelled, 
And fancy on me wrought 
Where Sampson's flood was fought : 

The running ships — those havockers and helFd — 
With shells which cried or caught. 

Wide on the wave the thunderers ; and, o'er, 

Their fire-curves knit the sky. 

There, Iowa holding high, 
Her sanguine sailor of our waters war 

Saw Clark come up — hurl by ! 

So Eobley's rolling turrets must hold breath, 

Whilst Oregon was thrown 

Before him from his own : 
Her swifting, heavy surge swept, bowling death. 

Ah ! too, on that Colon. 

Clark let again the stricken chase to view, 

And Iowa freshly roars ! 

— But say what reason scores 
Together a light maiden, met anew. 

And Spain upon the shores ? 

QUE. SHADOW OE POETO EICO. 

Rumor and rumor came, and changed and dinned, 
And went, till each new prospect met with gibe. 
But one word grew at last which held the wind ; 
When many a man remembered he had sinned ; 
His heart with lurid vision could describe 
The mounty isle still trenched with Spain's dark, doubt- 
ful tribe. 



THE TBOOPEE. IT 

Movement and muniment were held, in hand ; 
Dismission towards the vaguely venturous 
Suspended o'er this squadron of command, 
O'er close and rolling leagues to leave the land. 

The war broke down — But, for deep days, as thus, 
If we failed Porto Rico, yet it came to us. 

So — on a night of pest and stive, 
Everyone surlily just alive, 

Tressure exclaimed : " I want 
Little more of these foolish ills ; 
Damn the officers, flies, and pills, 

I'm for a useful jaunt." 

Saddled his horse ; the horse-guard fails j 
Most of us sleepless on the bales. 

" Who will go with me ? Swift ! 
Get on your bones and come along. 
Gentlemen, we will, going strong. 

Manage to bring a whyfft." 

Swift and Tressure broke camp that night, 
Veering away from the sentries' sight. 

" Eling to a sentry back " 
(Tressure told him), " if they demur : 
^Letters — Commanding officer ' — 

Then they will let us track." 

Spattering into and out of ditch. 
Hurrying through the midnight's pitch ; 

Tressure a son of lands — 
He and Swift, who jehu's a hack 
In Chicago, and nothing slack ; 

They are a pair shake hands. 



78 THE CAN ALE BO. THE TBOOPEB. 

Into Tampa and out once more. 
Porto Eico ! that was in store, 

They to a challenge yell. 
Only the ropes of the smith's bough-shack 
Tearing down, on the gallop back, 

Came they — and all was well. 

THE TWO MOETALITIES. 

(In a troop-train northward.) 

What lies beneath the fameless stone, 
(When straying feet surprise the sod,) 

Appeals so in its need, alone. 
We aid it with a wish to God : 

So most we, meek and mutely plead. 

Conceive the voices of the dead. 

For they are deep — yet nigh again ; 

Departed — still how intimate ! 
From far, they keenly cry to men 

To hope them high ere join their state. 
In answer we, remotely near. 
Think tenderly to them the drear. 

But, near to no uncertain bones. 

The stranger stands in one astound ; 

Where, bold and loud, eternal tones 
Baise very clarion around, — 

And that one knows who holds the breath 

That what is here was never death ! 

The sadder relics, where they blend 
In element, implore our care; 



THE TROOPER. 79 

But these, tlie great, "v^e nothing lend — 

We gain the whelm of pride they bear ! 
Their dust itself a vital shrine — 
Whose mind was daring and divine ! 

SLEEPING IE ONE'S CLOTHES IN AN 
AKMOEY. 
Annoyed and ailing, and impatient, in 
The Jersey City armory, with its din 
XJnintermitting far into the night, 
The arcs and sight-seers aching on the sight, 
I said Now Vll repose — and when I'd said, 
Some people came and watched my dunnage spread. 

What square impertinence ! — effrontery ! 
Can't I lie down, but gapers come and see ? 
Can't a tired trooper roll his blouse and books 
For pillow, but a whispering rabble looks ? 
I took my boots off, and lay on my floor 
Wrapped in my blanket, angrier then than sore ; 
But having on the foe made my attack — 
A thorough curse-you-! glance — and turned my back. 

The persons went. 

Then I was left alone 
To muse their manners no worse than my own. 
My tired mere privacy was my right there, 
But don't I at the crude-conditioned stare ? 
One surely ought to feel, nor need to learn, 
All human, still, is in their lives who earn. 

Besides, I say the Jersey citizens 
Were — looking at them without any lens — 
The kindest, really hospitable folk 
Our train which came from Tampa ever spoke. 



80 THE CANALERO. THE TROOPER. 

Not but that everywhere along the line 

We met receptions rather over-fine ; 

A draft of hostlers we, and were acclaimed 

As if our moiety, Santiago-famed ; 

We were, avoiding all these scenes we could, 

Hailed at all towns a war-worn brotherhood. 

But when at Jersey City once arrived, 

As heroes we could not be uncontrived. 

Not Cuba men, we told them — 't was no matter — 

We could not pay five cents for soda-vf ater ; 

We got cigars and idiotic cheers, 

Bartenders would not take our coin for beers ; 

And, as the rations '^^ less were to our mind. 

At different boards we daily double-dined. 

Why should we not be shows, then, to these fellows ? 

They did not poke us, did they, with umbrellas ? 

(Such were the thinkings crossing my closed eyes, 
Wound on the floor, not bothered much by flies.) 

All that was asked of us — by twos and tens — 
Was loaded shells of our Krag-Jorgensens. 
If one of us had died — to rest his clay 
There was not half a volley in Troop A. 

Mister^ give me a bullet ! 

— Having turned, 
Someone of my unsleeping had discerned. 
" Mister, give me a bullet : " — and there stood 
A dainty friend I had ; and, yes, I would. 
Florence was tall, her asking eyes so pretty ; 
The slenderest grace of twelve in Jersey City ; 
So took my cartridge with a contact such 
Both child and beauty warmed her finger-touch. 
She ran av/ay, and I felt restful-cheerier. 



THE TBOOPEB. 81 

They cleared and dimmecj the lofty, long interior. 
Porms settled down, and filled a silent spot ; 
I, with the schoolgirl in my thought, forgot. 

What ! so had Oxford even a younger flame. 

One day a little lady to him came, — 

While I was in the car, the guard to stand, — 

And offered fruit and simples in her hand ; 

So seriously sweet, without a wile. 

That it was quite impossible to smile. 

*^ I asked if she had seen the puma, and 

Took her all round the armory by the hand. 

Some others tried to stop me in our walk. 

But I'd not leave her — with them would not talk. 

She was such company, we soon had grown 

Conspicuous for straying all alone. 

I got a hardtack sound for her to keep, 

When she uplifted the sincerest peep, — 

Saying, beside her thanks, with thought of me, 

Was I not hungry, and it time for tea ? 

O say ! " said Oxford, (one of his tongue-tricks,) 

'^ To see the very graciousness, at six ! 

Her nurse came, and it hit me on the raw. 

The sweetest little girl you ever saw ! " 

THE PEAIEIE SEAT. 
(For N. M. L.) 

Have you seen the plainsman's style. 

After them to round them up ? 
Smile, — for whim and pleasure smile, 

As he keeps the ridge's top ! 



82 THE CANAL^BO. THE TEOOPEB, 

Piping his falsetto pipe, 

Which is distance' longest cry ; 

With a sleeve his face to wipe, 
Galloping against the sky ; 

Whirling out his dart ^ lassdo ' 
Bound the truant legs or neck ; 

Careless as the wind of you — 
Indian-easy — nothing-reck : 

So the puncher goes his race, 
Waving up a balance arm ! 

^Tis a figure with a grace. 

With a sunny cheer and charm. 

CAMP PRESTO. 

'Tis, from the cistern passed all day 
By drivers handling their mule-reins, 
About half-way 
(Or more, it may,) 
To the place of the transport-ships and trains ; 

From that shy cottage cluster, red, 
WTiich off its cliff-side nearly spills. 

As o'er bestead 

By canvas-spread — 
The cavalry near, with its horse-ridged hills. 

The cistern stayed above the road, — 
i'rom Ours and cars this equal walk, — 

Stands, pumped and flowed 

With good cool load. 
Perhaps at the summit of all Montauk ; 



THE TBOOPEB. 

And soTitli from this height hugely crowned, 
Towards ocean, and by rough degree, 

With bound and bound 

Descends the ground 
To the level green of a sea-ward lea. 

That gleamed one morning, bright and bare 
As through Columbian, Indian years : 

At noon — down there 

I sent a stare. 
At a finished camp of the engineers ! 

Their faultless right and forward line, 
Their even points of tented snow, — 

Done while we'd dine. 

All done, and fine, — 
Were a wonder, even where wonders show. 

As on the cistern eminence, 
I've seen a soldier, under night, 

Sit on the fence — 

One pen-perpense — 
And write his letters by 'lectric light. 



THE BROKEN ELOWER. 

The nearest that we were to war 
Was when the troop came home, 

And all of us who had a floor 
Left it to lie on loam. 

The stalwart in a stumbling stoop - 
Their great eyes in a smile ; 



84 TRE CANALERO. THE TROOPER. 

Ah. ! we could hardly cheer the group — 
So changed from late erewhile. 

And who was come ? and who was dead ? 

And who was still to die ? 
Our darlings to their tents we led^, 

And warmly sat us by. 

— The dutiless and dirty press 
Was hubbub o'er such fate, 

And staining with all scurril mess 
Our generals and our state ; 

Those gentlemen who finely toiled ! 

But here's the guilt, when bared : 
You nation with the tongues embroiled, 

Your name is Unprepared ! 



PEMBEE, OF THE EEGULAR EIGHTY-SECOND. 

Now steady, steady, P ember, and do not go so pale. 
Said Pember, " I can't help it or disguise it that I ail ; 
Oh, what a captain I to take my men against the gale ! " 

But they are coming, Pember; you had the word to 

charge ; 
You passed it doiun, and there they come, up from, the 

bushes Tnarge ! 
His horse was shuddered, he broke sweat, his men looked 

over-large. 

Ride down and form them — His aivay from where we 
shall be racked. 



THE TROOPER. 85 

He spurred upon his company, as though by him at- 
tacked, 

Did Captain Pember, crying white, and in a voice that 
cracked. 

Oh Pemher, Harry Pemher, hut battle is so large / 
"Eight forward, easy company, till on the ridge's 

marge." 
He brought them up on Droning Hill. " Now — follow 

me — men charge ! " 

Oh ! Captain Harry Pember the foremost fort-ward fell 5 
They shot his coward heart out with their massed ma- 
chine or shell ; 
But they shot a new — a soldier's ! — in his memory to 
dwell. 

TO THE UNTEAINED TEOOP-HOESE. 

" 'I admire your nerve, but *** **** your judgment,' as the 
locomotive said when it was charged by the buffalo." — A Plains 
Saying. 

You are delicate, powerful too ; 

A danger yourself, yet afraid of a newspaper's 

Flutter ; you have speculation and seeing — 

A judgment wild a,t a footstep-fall. 

You're a beautiful frame and strenuous, 

A petted ?.nd petulant little thing. 

You are a baby — resemble a woman — 

Exacting, demuring to silly sounds ; 

You who could kill me with one right blow ! 

But kill me you wont, or save yourself — 

Less able to this as your need is dire. 

The pain you feel from a neighbor's hoof — 



86 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

Just screaming away from tlie hateful-heel — 

Forgets the idea to lift your own. 

You and a woman are twainly those 

Helpless, who are admired the more j 

Both being loved inevitably, 

Knowing the pretty cares you are ; 

A pair surpassing each poor distress, 

Let a girl catch skirt or Loco strike 

At the quack who salves his Tampa sore. 

Your coarser breed with the shag long-ear 

Has a reason tough — and he has it whence ? 

Sagacious, and shrewd, and unperturbed. 

The human may trust for sign to him 

Where frantic you'd wreck with yourself the world ! 

But you are the graceful fool — and he 

Is the singular wisdom-and-Caliban ; 

Unregarded ; the negro sorts 

With his harsh and content, in all hard ways — 

And I do like a nigger and a mule. 

The happiest match on the wide world round ; 

Why, a mule would kick me for my white face, 

And Cunny would want his lines from me. 

But you — for a nuzzling simpleton ! — 

Who want your oats ere your nose-bag's on, 

Whirl it a third of a hundred yards 

High and behind you — then stand as scared, 

Astonished, and looking affronted ! Oh, 

So foolish a fellow ! — feed your grain 

From the ground ; and grit your teeth withal ! 



The gaunt Bezonian, Roman-nosed, 
Pitched a major and captains tway 



THE TBOOPEB. 87 

(Fighters, but not for a raw-boned fray) j 
But, as a bare-back beast, disclosed 
A. decent old waterer every day. 

There were Loco George and Loco Jim, 
Strikers called, with a glance of hell ; 
Rushed, and trampled you if you fell. 

The second, would few men fool with him ; 
But George a good fellow, once he was well. 

The Telegraph Pole (as he held his head) 
Chose that his bridle and cheek divorce ; 
For we were a ladderless mounted force. 

The Baby marched with a careless tread, 
As much of a man as a heavy horse. 

Doltish some, and some with acumen ; 

Bucking, and easily backed to ride ; 

Trustful, and distant devil-eyed ; 
Characters various as the human. 

Save but the sort of the self-relied. 



PHILOLOGY OF THE AEM. 

« Carbine," Oxford ! — that is right ; 
For the troop we'll hold it tight ; 
We wont pinch the sound to een; 
English brute, but French is mean. 

Stay — our friends from Cuba call 
Spanish here the best of all : 
Carbine, carbine, neither say 
Spaniards ; better ; " Mauser," they. 



88 THE CAN ALE EO. THE TEOOPEB. 

— Had, like our Krag-Jorgensen, 
Tliat been carbine-shortj what then ? 
Ours but barks like honest Towser, 
Spain's had still been tigerish mouser. 



A PAIR OF SONNETS. 
I. 
The only heroism was always thine ; 

We — vain and minions — have the force, the field. 

To take the liberty we less do wield 
Than follow, as that flood may make its line; 
And also we did never things to shine, 

Sith that which we are for is, not to yield ; 

And sith our honor should but be revealed 
'Tis wrong to praise it in us undivine : 
But thou who from the very first of life 

Hadst loneliness, unborne upon career ; 
But thou, thy son who lettest to the knife, 

If that may be, and smilest with the tear ; 
But thou, worn by the long and waiting strife. 

Hast the high heart, my lady and my dear ! 

II. 

He is not a man : should to his hand arrive 

Some float upon these waters, he may swim ; 

He has the force of brain, the form of limb. 
But never can without an aid survive ; 
But men do breast when fates do most deprive ; 

The soul resurgent stern is not of him ; 

Nor Shakespeare's settled scan all down our dim — 



THE TROOPER. 89 

The scorn of Byron — not the heart of Clive. 
And if he had them all, they would not serve ; 

His tides of men have been and passed him by, — 
Their little waves were found enough to swerve ; 
He never to the minute nicked the nerve ; 

Commission sins — omission is but lie ; 

And what can God but let the coward die ? 



THE AEMY. 

To "prove to a callous people 

That the sense of a soldier's worth, 
That the love of comrades, the honor of arms, 

Have not yet perished from earth. ' ' 

Miles Keog''s Horse 

An easy centaur, in drawing near, 
Looks almost shy at us Volunteer. 
He does not trouble to raise his hand — 
Indeed, he doesn't quite understand. 

Next Ours there are tents where all within 
Is nice as the neatness of a pin ; 
We sleep two or three, with the gear of more. 
While those clean tents cover three and four. 

And, down at their kitchen-tent, their meat 
Is more from the rations than what we eat. 
We fork our complimentary fare, 
And feed the puma with what's to spare. 

My fellows who led up the hill San Juan, 
Got laurels never to be foregone ! 
But, mentioned with less of the public thanks, 
West Point was there, and his seasoned ranks. 



90 THE CANALJSRO. THE TROOPER. 

They pleasantly smile on others' feasts — 
Perhaps they mutter about '^ foul beasts/' 
As neither the strainers nor themes of lung^ 
They do their orders, and hold their tongue^ 



THE PEAISE OF THE NAG. 

III. Watering — Seen in the Distance. 

You Eegular horses, 
A wave of you courses 

The undulous land ; 
You trot with your riders — 
You toss, you outsiders 

Led in the hand. 

Bright the brown turf is ; 
Sweet the skies' surface ; 

The puddle is blue ; 
And watering 's a gay thing. 
Done as a play -thing 

By troopers and you. 

Then, what pretty pleasure, — 
All draughted your measure, — 

You loosened ones fills j 
Back on a free scamper ! 
The mounts, with each camper, 

Tripple the hills — 

They coming behind you. 
Though spirits so mind you, 
You run to your line ! 



THE TBOOPEB. 91 

Like kittens, I think you ; 
Your legs, though, (which wink you,) 
Are thread-like and fine. 

And so, to your standing, 
Those strong men commanding 

Boot up with your mates! 
— They scold you and feed you : 
Your whole line, — I heed you, — 

Is gnashing, and grates. 

lY. Passage. 

And that is a scene of them — this is a sound. 

I lay on my boarded ground. 
And hollow along it, and into the tent. 
There rumored of hoofs that went ; 
In bland, continuous thunder-wake, — 

Yet thousand of separate shake ; 

The tremor of trample and trot on the tump ; 

All cleaved by their singing trump ! 

Silver ; 

In rumble or rubble, 

Eolling long. 

Unseen, they are trooping through my head, 

With their intricate roar of tread ; 
Say a squadron's fifteen score of force, 

Three hundred of Yellow the Horse. 
And the fretfullest charger must chafe in file. 

Or be gore in the mouth the while. 
But they 're shouted and bugled ! — wheeled into rank : 

Whirled cutlass and carbine clank. 



92 THE CANALEBO. THE TROOPER. 

Halted ! — 

Now silent, a-flutter ; 
Sidewise strong ! 

V. Beauty the Beast. 

Its nights we watched ; we nursed it sunned and sick ^ 
We fed it drooped before Floridian rain ; 

We only need have soothed for start or kick, — 
That face, so gallant, flashes least from brain. 

A being but soul alone, — or mad or kind, — 

Its frame requires a judgment's hand and plan. 

But v/hat that animal yet means of mind — 

How high-expressed, in terms of it, is man ! 

Chivalry, caballsro, — fire, and charms, — 

The horse named ! And substantiates this more : 

The fields' coquette of qu_iet-camped arms — 
The terrible woman that is wife to war ! 



TO MAJOE-GENEKAL LORD KITCHENER, 
OE KHARTOUM. 

" From thy gray scarp I view with scornful eyes, 
Ignoble broils of freedom most unfree ; 
Fear nothing, mother, where the carrion lies 
That unclean bird must be." 

Mr. Kipling's suppressed Quebec stanza. 

I THOUGHT they made you baron, Sir Herbert, of Khar- 
toum, 

For where you came your very name denounced of Eng- 
land's doom : 



THE TROOPEE. 93 

A baronet or knight is light — it is a sort of lie — 
To tell what kind of soldier keeps clear an Irish eye. 

It deeply serves, to be polite, if you be dubbed or peer. 
And — for that matter — you have friends, American 

and here. 
Would hold you more than Sherman, than Wheeler more 

respect. 
And would, to meet you, take the first Cunarder would 

connect. 

Too sterling ! they'd not flatter you — we at their men- 
tion twit, 

And laughter goes around with them, they liven bar- 
room wit ; 

But most Americans would say. Sir Herbert Kitchener — 

Would say — they would say nothing . . They would be 
silenter. 

I'm told they have ennobled you. — Lord Kitchener, of 

Khartoum, 
You know of sweat, and what's a bet ; you those, my lord, 

illume ; 
ISTor you regret a baton, as Wolseley, Eoberts wield ; 
You'd rather hold the watchful sword than sit and sway 

your field. 

My lord, but you must make one think of Cuba, as Khar- 
toum; 

We had a by-play with the Spanish, valiant in their 
gloom ; 

But we are not Soudan — we are another man — 

What do you think, if Irish eyes were hither brought to 
scan ? 



94 THE CANALJ^EO. THE TROOPER, 

TO THE CAMBEIDGE MEN", 
Aftek the Football Game op 1898 Won from Yale. 

Note. — The stanzas here impute or state a certain Harvard 
lachesse. The impugnment is unfortunate for me, as coming from 
a camp soldier and no footballer. I will, however, entertain any 
compliments. 

The trouble with Harvard, in antagonism and always, is inde- 
cision in conjuncture. The dictate of force must be accepted at 
its access; for at such instants as it does occur, it is all, and 
judgment simply has no bearing. Eeady in act as wit. When 
life is dice, don't think. — I have no position to criticise the 
Harvard play, and I have done so. 

Once more the shining bough — 

The habit not to yield 1 
For is not, Harvard, now. 

Your viler season sealed ? 
The game, the world-work calls. 
With HoUis in the halls i« 

And Eoosevelt from the field. 

The soldier of state — his deeds 
Mark how a strength is right ; 

Your close converser leads 
Your feeling what is fight ; 

You have your fire, or glints. 

But you ought, with these flints, 
To stand as strong as white. 

When strain is hard and high, 
Nor wall of Yale will swerve, 

Clear ye the clearer eye 

And string a sullen nerve ; — 



THE TROOPER. 95 

Ko Hollis then at heart, 
And Eoosevelt set apart, 
Be you the men ye serve ! 

For this the rider sits 

In capitolar sway ; 
To show good men and wits 

To be the men they may. 
So he who to you came, 
Whom you should dread to shame, 

Means, if he do not say. 

Thus they illustrate — one — 

And one inspirits — how 
Heads may be o'er-fine spun. 

And never were enow ; 
No lighter sneer at strife — 
The going in — is life ; 

Nor dirt of it must cow. 

Matching in strenuous sweat, 

With friendly foes at war. 
The battle look you get 

From Eli's boot and oar. 
For brave is fine and sweet. 
Fit to kiss women's feet, 

Or have of heavenly more. 

Oh, guard the gains of grace, — 

The letter, lore, and lyre ! 
But you must be their base, 

Which only bears them higher. 



96 THE CANAL^BO, THE TROOPER. 

Make Veritas, the truth, 
You gerLtlemen and youth, 
The power, as well as fire ! * 

CHIEF OF A! 

Oh fervid Captain whom I never saw. 

But needed not behold; 
Oh fighter with the intellect for awe j 
Oh sword ensouled. 

Your withered hundred hear the last command ; 

There comes no lighter laugh ; 
They think with gloom, though gladly they disband, 
How we are chaff. 

Could they forget their one without compare — 

The leader best and worst ? 
Oh bright to save, oh swift to overbear. 
Who made them first ! ^^ 

But blood, when worn, is sweet as is a rose 

A woman has even thrilled. 
Oh blameless breast, oh envied of repose. 
Oh battle-killed. 

* Keferring to the game to which these lines revert, the hope 
was expressed, to an undergraduate, that Harvard would prevail 
again and v/in the '99 match with Yale. He answered : "We have 
almost the same team, — only one or two of the old men gone. 
What more do you want ? " 

Could any speech he more like Harvard ? What is wanted is 
the game. Means may he thus or so ; but the whole matter is the 
object — not them. 

[The '99 game a tie, Yale shows up the better, as Harvard was 
on her own ground.] 



THE TROOPER. 97 

In soaken soil, oh darkly left and laid, 

Too dull to fight or feel ; 
Oh gleaming memory — unf orgotten shade — 
Oh quick O'NeiU! 



DUNNAGE. 

I NEVER think that sadder things 

Were any man's at ease ; 
No friendship I had ever clings — 

I might at least have these. 

My khaki and my merest shirt, 

My spurs and shading hat, 
Though army-mine they only hurt 

My haply glancing at. 

I might have fomid on San Juan Hill 

My silence or my sword ; 
My death, or duty lived through still — 
Thou only knowest, Lord ! 

I only know a soldier I 

Have never really been ; 
And meanly these things meet my eye, 

For might they have been mean. 

The things must burn, save only one, 
'Twere half with tears to part : 

My blouse I smoke in — when all's done, 
It held — shall hold my heart. 

A soldier I have never been. 

Nor officer I may. 
But, if you've lost your longing's scene. 

Work, man, some second way ! 

That is the fate of all but few ; 

Our chains but do not clank ; 
But, life ! how have I drunk to you 

The bitterest e'er I drank ! 
99 



AMERICA TERRENIAi — ULTIMATE 
IMPERIALISM. 

Because I do believe my land 
Must in its own way expand. 
As fate and fathers planned ; 

Because our federated form, — 

Mart and mountain, coast and warm, - 
Can stand to any storm, 

Wliile some diffuse colonial aim, 
Rather than the closer frame. 
Were weaker than this same ; 

Because, compact, we grew and grow 
Awfuller to aught of foe, 
On rock of right — Monroe ; 

Because we cannot roam with wars 
To the rounding elder shores. 
And justly at our doors 

Still say, so Europe frown, but fear, 
This is free — your hemisphere 

You HAVE YOU come NOT HERE : 

Therefore, — I hope that, leaving far 
Idle isles Avhich turn or bar 
Our steps on paths which are, 
101 



102 THE CANALJSBO. THE TEOOPEE. 

(So soon as safe and wrought to peace ! 
Pitted for their own release, 
Or — gift — Japan's increase, ) 

We shall resume the place our birth 

Signs ; and lay that stream whose worth 
Is our next strength on earth. 

The sister of Suez is to be, 
On the Western inter-sea, 

Which none must hold but we. 

Ethics were earlier than Monroe, 
Honor was, and reason so ; 
'Nov do these change and go. 

~FoT the Eepublic is the moat, — 
Eor the castle of the vote 
Defence and wealth afloat. 

Beside — for which we ever longed — 
Power, with Darien funnel-thronged, 
To make our kind unwronged. 

It is our station's first behest 
That we ward each lesser West, 
No comer shall molest.* 

* On behalf of Great Britain, this clause was dropped into inter- 
national law by Mr. Cecil, the Marquess of Salisbury, the head of 
the English Ministry at the date of President Cleveland's Ven- 
ezuelan Message to the Congress. 



AMERICA TEBBENIA. 103 

At home, at hand but let ns build 
As is plain to be fulfilled ; 

Grow circumstanced, and skilled ; 

And like the states unite the seas — 
Spread the pink to shake the breeze, 
Samoas and Caribbees. 

Shall be its flutter's shadow worn 
Down the lands the liegeless born, 
The coasts from cold to Horn. 

These yet be young, increscive hours ; 
And to gird the earth with towers 
Unconcentrates our powers. 

It still were wise to keep renewed 
Our eld creed of longitude. 
Till none may dream intrude. 

Once fully here we rule the air, 
Gathers to Columbia's chair 
The all-terrestrial care. 

When from this blue, unbuilded dome- 
She will wield the world at home. 
Greater than Guelph and Eome. 



NAMES AE"D TEEMS. 



^America Terrenia. Unconventional Latin for America of the 
world. 

^ And a private is killed in town. Several soldiers of the Tampa 
camps were killed by lightning — certainly three. One man 
was struck in Tampa as he was about to open a door, doubt- 
less running for shelter. 

Armadillo. The sounding the Spanish II as y is almost invaria- 
ble in this Doric. Thus — armadteeyo. Neither, in Nicaragua, 
is there a Castilian d, unless at words' ends. 

Boca Colorado. Our mouth of a river is effluent, this of the 
Colorado receptive, where it delta's with the San Juan. The 
Colorado loops down and up again, in Costa Rica, south- 
easterly, then round and up north-easterly to the Caribbean. 
One doubts but it is naturally the main river, as deeper and 
not less broad than the arm continuing the San Juan's name 
to Grey town. 

BoNiTA. Pretty one. 

Brito. This name of a hacienda becomes the engineers' syno- 
nym for the canal's Pacific mouth. See the subject, Lake-to- 
Brito Line. 

Caballero (cabayaiVo). Hardly any more of the Spanish b 
than d in this run-down Latinette. 

Canalero (canaZairo). As who should say " canaller." It is 
everything to be a canaUro in Nicaragua ; you need nor pass 
nor passport. 

Canteen. Cantina (caniecna). Bar-room. 

8 Cardenas and Zelaya (cardeuas, zelj/a). Dr. Cardenas was 
the President, with the capital at the aristocratic Granada; 
General don Jos6 Santos Zelaya is the President, seated in 
his palace at Managua. Dr. Cardenas, representing civiliza- 
tion, heads the Conservadors ; General Zelaya hnndles the 



106 NAMES AND TERMS. 

Liberals in the interest of rapacity. The state of society is 
like that formerly of the Scotch highland clans ; an American 
southern parallel to the famous feuds of those exists at this 
hour in the strifes of the three considerable cities of Mana- 
gua, Granada, and Leon. In the very time (1898) when war 
was imminent with Costa Rica, Leon made a momentary stir 
of uprising, restive under Zelaya's Managua rule. The Nicara- 
gua a Conservador, like the clansman who followed Roderick 
Dhu's bannered Clan- Alpine pine, wears the color of green for 

Cardenas and Granada, and Zelaya of Managua's adherents 

the government— wearied— neither side pretending to dis- 
play the flag of Nicaragua. Both the leaders are men of good 
family. The demagogue is a charming person ; certainly a 
bold man ; he has Nicaragua under the saddle and rides it with 

a good seat. Let me hazard that he is the force — Zelaya is 

preventing consummation of the alliance of Nicaragua with 
two other states, as the " Greater Republic of Central Amer- 
ica"; while he lends himself, astutely, to the keeping the idea 
in the air, in order to conserve friendship with the two neigh- 
bors. For he has his hands full. Cardenas, with his exiled 
Conservadors, lies in the inimical Costa Rica, with whose gov- 
ernment they have a natural entente. Natural because the San 
Jos6 government is aristocratical like the Cardenas Revolu- 
tion. More than this, it is the Costa Ricans' policy and am- 
bition to get any foot of frontier on the canal, which their 
boundary for miles only narrowly fails to reach now. They 
entertain and aid the Nicaraguan Conservadors on the engage- 
ment of these to cede to them a canal frontage if the Revolu- 
tion succeeds in reestablishing the Granada regime. But if 
the canal is to disuse the San Juan River from Grey town to 
the mouth of the Colorado, and is to adopt this effluent in- 
stead, the Costa Ricans will have their desiderium without the 
Conservadors' assistance, the Colorado flovring through Costa 
Rica; and presumably this would give them the canal's Carib- 
bean port as well. Still, these are only two of a number of 
route-variations considered. 

Cascabel (cB.scH.hel) . Little-bell is a dainty name for the rattle- 
snake. Propitiative, like the Greeks' Eumenides for the 
Furies ? 

Casthxo (cRsteeyo). This squalid town, at the rapids of the 



NAMES AND TERMS. 107 

San Juan, has its name from the hateful black old fortress 
crowning the almost superiucumbent height immediately 
behind — a structure fairly insulting to the regard. Lord Nel- 
son, before ennobled, was here ; a young officer in that fright- 
fully unfortunate English expedition which took tlie fort 
from the Spanish, but was afterwards overwhelmed by them 
when the men were swimming in the river. The valor of 
their retreat, from their ancient enemy, on his own ground 
(then), their condition of destitution, dizzy fever and dying, 
are one of the showings of British gallantry under absolute 
reverse. The decimation was the tenth men left, or some- 
thing like that. Only the horse of Private Miles Keog got 
away from the death-fight of Custer, as (was it?) only a 
single man from Thermopylae (if that), but the English in 
this expedition were almost as brave. Query — in what 
measure owing to the presence of Horatio Nelson ? Query — 
did possibly the Spaniards show some indolent mercy in let- 
ting such men escape ? The Greeks were the noblest among 
the three carnages; they were defending their Hellas; but 
we were surrounded by the savage with whom we keep mean 
faith, and the English were on conquest. Now, this is the 
essential difference between the United States and the United 
Kingdom, that the world shall come to us by a gravitation, 
an accretion; coming — not brought through blood and not 
bound. The all-Anglican union is Columbia holding the 
skein. That many Englishmen know it — like Goldwin 
Smith — is not so remarkable as that fewer Americans per- 
ceive it themselves. But the hour is not now. We have diges- 
tion to perform at home — before going abroad to lunch on 
a Philippines. The Philippines are to be reduced to the awe 
of the American flag, then cleaned up and disposed of. It 
has been saying that centralization is no longer a principle 
of the Republican Party, but whichever Party shall embrace 
it as its own will elect the Presidents. It took a Lincoln to 
keep whipped-in the part of a loose-bundle-of -sticks nation 
and press it through the Civil War. We see the same diffi- 
culty now: we see the motley of the treasonable and the 
faint engaged in an encouragement, of some efTectuality, of 
the Filipinos in rebellion against us. If we have not — for 
foreign or outward policy — a national establishment so firm 



108 NAMES AND TEEMS. 

as that an administration can freely ignore malcontent ^roices, 
then we shall never be fit to be imperial ; we shall dilute our 
consistency, we shall disintegrate very certainly in a scatter 
of dominions. Local freedoms in the Union Americans will 
have; to extend the same rights to all external members 
when such possessions can wisely be received; but until our 
administrations be empowered with absolute headship of 
these, nationally, remote territories will be follies. We must 
converge into a centralized, compact government, as to the 
extraneous world, before we wear its crown ; a government 
responsible to none and nothing but the next election. And 
any slightest protectorate of the Philippine archipelago would 
be as committal as their retention. To reduce them to the 
respect of our greatness, then to heal them and humanize — 
to do these things our honor is bound. After which, to turn 
them over — neither to the tactless abrasions of British rule 
nor (for a joke) to the fool of Prussia — but to the Mikado, 
would be to leave them to the hands of a brilliant, equally 
oriental race, partly Malay itself, pretty well our friend (if 
not quite trusty), who would know how to govern them. 
Meanwhile, we have our maturity to evolve, our solidity to 
consummate, and an enactment to make passing ultimate 
power to the President of any tremendous times. The re- 
public's safeguard relies in tlie right of the House to impeach. 
All this is business at home. Governor Roosevelt misbecomes 
his forcible ability in his feeling — indeed it is greatly more 
his sentiment than his energy of mind — that wherever the 
flag is once floated, there it must stay. President McKinley 
has spoken, as Koosevelt should speak, within a statesman's 
bounds, and has said that wherever the American colors are 
assailed the knee shall bend under their shadow. Then the 
offender may go. He may come back to us of his own seek- 
ing when we are sublime. 
* Chocolate (chocoZaMay). Interesting, if misrhymed. The 
" comino la chocolate," or its mud, looks like the residues of 
its siesta namesake, in the rainy season. Small blame at- 
taches to the government for these bad roads. Macadam on 
Telford would not stand the torrent and bake, or at all events 
would be of mighty cost to keep repaired. There is one fair 
road between Rivas and San Juan del Sur. 



NAMES AND TEEMS. 109 

Colorado. Refer to Boca Colorado. 

Commission. Of the various American expeditions to Nicara- 
gua, on canal surveys, this was the commission composed of 
Rear Admiral John G. Walker, U. S. N. (Retired), president; 
Major Peter C. Hains, Corps of Engineers, U. S. A. ; and Pro- 
fessor Lewis M. Haupt, C. E. Civil Engineer A. G. Menocal, 
U. S. N., accompanied not officially. Erom the fine former 
survey conducted by Mr. Menocal for the United States — 
and from his deriving from it the bold high-line conception 
for the construction — he is perhaps the first professional 
authority on the canal project; this if our own distinguished 
chief engineer, Mr. E. S. Wheeler, of Admiral Walker's expe- 
dition, may not now equal even Mr. Menocal's mastership of 
the stupendous problem. The work is something in the 
grand which must be wrought to perfection and play to the 
delicacy of a watch. Winds which heap the lake waters, thus 
sinking their surface left behind; variable evaporation; ter- 
minus harbors gathering sand-bar from the sea ; deluge, and 
utter drought ; solid stone, bottoming miles of the San Juan 
River — these are some of the complexity of difficulties con- 
fronting the Nicaraguan Canal engineer. Yet professional 
opinion has steadily accrued to the Nicaraguan location. 
This expedition of Walker's went down by the gunboat New- 
port, leaving New York on December 5th, 1897. 

CoKRALiLLOS (corraleeyos). One Rio Grande camp. 

fi Costa Rica. The state south of Nicaragua is a distinct soci- 
ological contrast. The country is orderly and busy; there 
are many resident foreigners ; thrift and railroad are devel- 
oping the wealth. The ladies of San Jos6 and that capital 
itself are much admired. 

Cuartel (quarfeZ). Barracks-and-guardhouse. 

Cutter. Bush-clearer; machetero. 

Dunnage. The soldier's bundle. (A neologism ?) 

El Pavon (pahvowe) . A camp on the Rio Grande. 

EspiNAL (espinaZ). First camp after leaving the river Lajas. 
Here is the little divide, the highest land between lake and 
Pacific, starting the watersheds either way. 

FmcA (fincai). The farmer's cot, distinguished from the house 
of the broad hacienda. It is made of upright poling, not 
close, so that sight and breeze pass through. Swine do so 



110 • NAMES AND TEEMS. 

by the doors. The roof is a very deep thatch, or, more pros- 
perously, of crocks of the culvert shape. 

6 — friends by the sea. The U. S. S. Alert, cruiser, was cooper- 
ating with the Commission from the Pacific, doing hydro- 
graphic work at the Brito end about the shore and the 
Grande's mouth. The Ale^^t was also playing peacemaker, 
commissioners of Nicaragua and Costa Rica meeting on board 
to compound against a war, this event threatening between 
the states. 

7— from Mto here. The reason the troop lettering, from A to 
M, does not denominate thirteen troops, instead of the nor- 
mal regimental twelve in cavalry, is that there is no Troop J. 

Garrobo (garr/iobo) . Male to the iguana — q.v. 

« Gentk (Jmitj) . People generally. More particularly — folk, 
farmers, woodmen, camp-hands, soldiery. The word very 
frequent. 

Geronimo (heroiiimo). Popular musics (like his "After the 
Ball ") only reach this agreeable performer in their very old 
age. His own wood-notes are antic — strange with break and 
redemption of measure — totally sad under pretty. N. B., 
half Spanish and Indian. 

^Granada. The city chiefly cosmopolitan and polite, and the 
most ancient. 

Grande . The con siderable Rio Grande meanders from the little 
divide westward to the ocean, the valley it leads one of the 
most valuable natural features of the western side. 

Gkeat DivroE. The mountains towards the river San Juan 
between Greytown and Lake Nicaragua. See Lake-to-Brito 
Line — the parenthesis. 

Greytown. Or the Nicaraguans' San Juan del Norte. It is 
not singular — such misnomer familiar in geography — that 
their San Juan del Sur, on the PaclQc, is a trifle higher in 
latitude. What is notable, about Greytown, is that while 
within forty or fifty years it had a harbor naturally, now 
eff"ectually it has none. The sands of the Caribbean have 
heaped a hopeless bar. Your steamer rides outside, and you 
go out to ^er by a shallow propeller. A canoe — a Mississippi 
stern-wheeu J with risk — would pass over the bar into the 
once port of Greytown. This recent imposement of the 
ocean, this sand-bank threshold, a phenomenon as it is, turns 



NAMES AND TERMS. Ill 

much eDgineering idea away from tlie proposal of break- 
waters here, and to some alternative eastern terminus for the 
canal. The town is a considerably cheaper edition of Chelsea 
in Massachusetts, less vigorously vile than Vallejo in Cali- 
fornia. By the way, remember, to speak of the pest of the 
English, of which we must be rid — their (pseudo-their) 
Mosquito Coast — the capital is Blewflelds correctly. The 
newspapers have turned it into Bluelields. Simply a literary 
memorandum — but even good atlases give it Biueflelds now. 

lOHoLTJS. Professor HoUis is, conspicuously, the principal 
man on the spot getting the courageous force out of the uni- 
versity undergraduate material. After this game the under- 
graduates dragged him through the streets in a wagon. 

Iguana. Female great lizard. Garroho (g.v.) must be a jok- 
ing agnomen for her mate, and he regularly iguano. 

Jesus (hej^swce) . In camp were two of this name, more than 
one Cruz, and a Santos. 

Juan — harshly, hwan. From a rustic mouth, even hwang. 

La F£. This hamlet of the Faith, at hand from Grey town, has 
the system of expeditionary buildings, which have housed 
various parties. La F6 was headquarters and hospital. 

Lago (lahgo) . Always meaning Lake Nicaragua in the text. 

Lajas (lahhahs). Rio de las Lajas. For the character of this 
demented Flagstone River, see the note on the Lake-to-Brito 
Line. 

Lake. Lieutenant G. C. Hanus, in the soundings of his con- 
tingent navy party, found a continuous depth in Lake Nic- 
aragua which had not been suspected. A very favorable 
thing, as the lake must afford more than a third of the com- 
pleted waterway. There is, of course. Lake Managua, with 
Managua on it, the capital, but the larger sheet is the lake — 
the lago — in canalero terms. Its name applied by the abori' 
ginal race was Cocibolca. 

'^'^Lake-to-Brito Line. The survey prosecuted by Mr. J. W. G. 
Walker's party, from the sontli-west of the lake to the 
Pacific. This line westers using all the valley advantage of 
the river Lajas, the Limonel (watercourse) , p- i'the rivers Tola 
and Grande. The Lajas is a crazy stream . sometimes it flows 
into the lake and sometimes out of it; otherwise it has a bar, 
crossed dry-shod, where it adjoins the lake, and then inti- 



112 NAMES AND TEEMS. 

mates with the water of this under the bar. Six miles west- 
ward (about) from the lake and this individualistic estuary- 
comes the little divide ; Mr. Walker's second camp was pitched 
there — at Espinal. (The great divide is east of the lake; 
where the mountains, although they diminish there, strike up 
the Trade winds so that these only alight again towards the 
lake's shore where the mouth of the Lajas is — surfing too the 
feet of the neighboring Madera and Ometepe.) From the lit- 
tle divide the Tola basin is dipped into — a concavity of ■which 
the eye from any of the surrounding heights can take in the 
whole, and see a magic of opaline color. By Tola and Kio 
Grande, and swamp of mangrove, you get to the Pacific 
Ocean, at the mouth of the Grande. This broad debouch- 
ment is promising, if Grey town is well-nigh desperate for 
the port on the east; though now it would no more than 
make a roadstead for pilot-boats or oyster pungies. It will 
require expanding commodiously for oceanic customers. 
Brito is the name of the locality, — a hacienda's name, — just 
as half the Nicaraguan geographical names are names simply 
of place. 

Leon. Leon, if the largest city, has the reputation of retaining 
Spanish tradition inveterately ; less liberalized than Granada 
or Managua. 

i^LiMON, Puerto Limon (pooaiVto limowe^. The flourishing 
Caribbean port of Costa Rica. 

Little divide. See the note Lake-to-Brito Line. 

Machete. " Curiously enough, the machetes are all made by 
one man, a Mr. Collins of Hartford, Connecticut [1]. . . The 
European makers send out machetes stamped Collins [2], but 
the natives can tell the genuine steel by glancing across the 
blade when turned up to the light, and they will take no 
other [3]." I noticed the first and third facts. The quota- 
tion is from Notes on the Nicaragua Canal, a pleasant book 
by Henry I. Sheldon, an antecedent visitor. The pronuncia- 
tions are matcheiay, matche^ty, (carelessly) matched'. 

Madera (made?/ra). See Ometepe. 

Managua (manaft'wa). Hardly a trace of the g in the name of 
the capital is spoken. Managua may have 10,000 population. 

i^Matagalpa. The Americans up in the northern hills, de- 
voted to coffee planting and other interests, are numerous 



NAMES ANB TERMS. 113 

enough to render the to"vvn describable as an American col- 
ony. "We go home and marry and our wives don't has^e to 
learn Spanish at ivlatagalpa." The Americans had to hang a 
murderer there. There are exceptions to what remains the 
rule that Americans living in Nicaragua are such as somebody 
or some law would like to catch in the United States. 

MoMOTOMBO {-tomho). A place on Lake Managua looking up 
towards the highlands. 

MoNTAUK. Camp Wikoff, on Montauk Point, w^as named after 
the ranking officer who fell in the war with Spain. 

1* — most like Maryland. "■ Fatti maschii, parole femine" The 
Maryland motto — and the same of the state arms — is neither 
more nor less than the proprietary barons' Baltimore, or now 
the Calverts', who disuse the title. I think most Marylanders 
understand the Italian as The deeds of men with women's 
words ; which is very characterizing of their generous state, 
but seems inaccurate translation. 

i^Mozo (toozo)o a man of the station of toil Gente (q.v.) is 
he collectively, in the most frequent sense. 

^6 Narrimba (narreemba) . A xylophonic musical instrument — 
a frame of a bench's shape with wooden keys struck over the 
hollows of gourds. 

Newport. The yacht-like gunboat (though she sadly trims by 
the head), a barkentine, did some conjunctive commission 
work about Greytown, like the Alert on the other side 

Nicaragua — nicaraft'wa. 

NiCARAGUENSB (nicarah'wjewsy) . Adjective or person. And the 
plural accordingly — Nicaraguenses, nicarah'ioewsies. Pro- 
nunciations with a playful effect, apt to the subjects. 

I'^iVo rag so royal — . Our flag, almost hopeless to drape, is in 
the sky the gallantest. The British is the handsomest — and 
its body of field, and that field's being red, are fit to denote 
the solidity and sanguineness of its nation. The German 
standard, bearing some black, is impressive ; there is a grace- 
ful majesty in the Italian standard of green. The gor- 
geous yellow and red of Spain is imagined as of the proudest 
flaunt, especially remembering it as dominioned. 

OcHOA (otchoa,). The section of the San Juan Kiver in the 
Ochoa region was (still is ?) contemplated for the immense 
single dam, if such the canal's construction, to be risen to or 
descended from by locks to its east. 



114 NAMES AND TERMS. 

Omktepe {ometepQy) . Om^tepec, the first Spaniards heard it 
called. This striking volcanic cone and the lesser Madera 
rise from the dual island of their base dimensions out of Lake 
N. in its south-west. Messrs. A. P Davis and C. W. Hayes 
ascended Ometepe in course of their work, a feat very infre- 
quent, so much so that it is twaddled that the mountain was 
never climbed before. Although it has convulsed within 
fifty or eighty years it is judged to have thrown its last lava. 
18 O'Neill. 

Could they forget their one without compare — 

The leader best and worst? 
Oh bright to save, oh swift to overhear ^ 
Who made them first! 

Indeed, no one would compare such generous spirits as Cap- 
tain William O. O'Neill and (of Troop L) Captain Allyn Capron. 
But when O'Neill commanded Troop A, as the senior regi- 
mental captain, and a man of his instant and vehement will, 
this troop was the troop of the prestige. At Montauk this 
was a tradition of A ; an excellent, but much junior, officer 
then commanding, — Frantz. 

Plantain. Few gente will eat plantains like an American, and 
vice versa; they are their potato, our dessert. They have 
them at both the principal meals, cooked while the skin is 
green, when the substance is no better than a candle. Potato, 
admitted, is a tasteless thing and a habit; but when the plan- 
tain is ripe and yellow, and then cooked, it is sweet, — very 
good. 

Puerto Lemon. Sse Llmon. 

Puma (pooma). Josephine, the mountain-lion, has been called 
as hateful as handsome, but she was only passionately shy. 
Trying to discourage your approach, she would retreat to the 
end of her chain and roll on her back, and spit and spit away 
prettily under your ruthless admiration. Aside from this 
weakness she was a great, savage, playful kitten ; — many a 
forgetful man jumped with a whoop, at night, feeling her 
slyly frolic paw on his heel from behind. 

PuRO {pooro). This is never made so large as an ordinary 
cigar, the tobacco is so strong. It is rolled, and sold mostly, 
by women. Puro varies from the Spanish pwrcs. 

Que gente (kay henty) . 

Quetzal (quetzal) . Distinctively native, radiant bird. 



NAMES AND TERMS. 115 

'^^Bdbhle Thinkings of a G-ood Officer. The following lines are 
seen quoted from Lowell's i)ara, a poem I have not read: — 

" The frank sun of natures clear and rare 
Breeds poisonous fogs in low and marish minds." 

20 Rations. One may trace signs that, before the Civil War, the 
influence of the South was almost prevailing, in the navy ; 
whereas (after having given Farragut and Porter to the na- 
tional rather than the state canse) the contrihution of men 
from the South to the navy's tone is now no more than equaS* 
to that of the rest of its personnel. The pronunciation of 
this word, ration, by nearly all old officers seems to show the 
Southern stamp ; they speak it as ration, with that a whici 
is short from New Orleans to Annapolis. No analogy, nor 
Worcester or Stormonth or Ogilvie permits such a pronuncia- 
tion, just as nothing but some mild madness can permit the 
unaccountable mis-utterance of the simple word inquiry 
chiefly among Northern people. But this ration pronuncia* 
tion Ccountenanced by Webster, and found in the Standard 
and Century^ is interesting for retention in the navy as so 
traditional. — The rations of the Tampa detachment of Colonel 
Roosevelt's regiment were such as soldiers must expect, espe- 
cially in war ; they were undelightf ul and serviceable. The 
worst was that the flies would have their share. Beautiful 
Montauk was different altogether. There the reassembled 
regiment had quantities of wholesoraes and dainties seut to it. 

Revolution. An out political party in arms. 

21R1VAS (reevas). It is a clean town, of some importance, on 
the western side. The lake-to-Brito party was in communi- 
cation with it all the way to the Paciflc. It is not on the lake, 
but two or three miles of tramway connect it with the shore 
settlement called San Jorge (^orfhay). 

San Carlos. This is the olden fort of the name and the naked 
town congregated around it on the baked promontory. At 
the fort there are some pig-iron cannon of uacertain centu- 
ries and a Nordenfeldt or Gatling or two- Without any dis- 
respect to Nicaraguan valor, the place could be taken by a 
corporal's guard of American marines or a German or English 
regiment. This sun-blasted San Carlos is at the head of the 



116 NAMES AND TERMS. 

San Juan River, where that draining stream derives itself 
from the lake. 

22 San Juan (hvyan) . The San Juan is to be understood as the 
river, as Lake Nicaragua is the lake. From Greytown up to 
the lake, at San Carlos, and across, is all but the completed 
ship waterv7ay. Traveling the San Juan boat exchanges 
with boat once, at Castillo, where the rapids cannot be inter- 
passed. The vessels are the familiar shallow stern-wheeler 
of rivers. 

San Juan del Sur (hwan del soor). On the Pacific Ocean, 
near the Costa Rica boundary. See the note, Greytown (San 
Juan del Norte). 

San Pablo. The Lajas camp. 

23" Saxo-Norman" is recalled as one of the late Lord Tenny- 
son's accuracies. When it is said that there is no such thing 
as an Anglo-Saxon it may be asked if there ever was one. 
But even the poet's serviceable phrase does not take account 
of the Celtic factor, of which surely the genius is throughout 
the Anglican civilizations. Witness that England is getting 
her light or slight literature from Scotland, while her cap- 
tains have been Irishmen for a century, from Wellington to 
this Kitchener. Such Irishmen are somewhat Celtic, even 
when only from atmosphere. 

Tambor Grande (^ambor grrawday) . Near a marsh land along 
the San Juan, not distant from Greytown ; or the marsh 
itself. Probably the most malarious camping experienced. 

^The pennant let fly ten thousand shy. Commodore's pennant, 
admiral's flag. The men of Commodore Schley's squadron 
of (Captain) Acting Rear-Admiral Sampson's fleet, called 
Commodore Schley "Ten Thousand Yards Shy," from the 
commodore's ordering that range on the Santiago blockade. 
Admiral Dewey under-ranked a flag — was a commodore — 
when he fought Manila. " Where," one heard the question, 
"are all the rear-admirals during this war?" One hears it 
answered : " It so happened that they had all just finished or 
were finishing their terms of sea duty when the hostilities 
began." Which explains the generally junior appointments 
to the high naval commands. 

TOBOBA (to6oba). It is said that the toboba, like few snakes, 
will attack initiatively. 



NAMES AND TERMS. IIT 

Tola. Although a tributary of the Grande, it was running 

. when the latter was pool and shallow only a little way back. 
These two rivers' banks are high, showing what their flood is 
in the rains. 

Tola basest. It is meditated to locate a western side dam at 
this hollow like the great Ochoa dam on the San Juan ; main- 
taining the canal's surface at the level of the lake as far as 
this — tben the steps of locks for intercommunicating with 
the Pacific Ocean. The river of the name does not flow 
through the Tola basin. 

Trade-winds. They are the north-east Trades. 

25Uhle (ooly). The sap of the rubber tree, starting out nearly 
white, ambers and browns almost within a minute under the 
eye; but it darkens further very slowly through months. It 
is handled in slabs, commercially, worth perhaps their weight 
in the country's silver. 

Vera Cruz {veyx^i cruce). 

Western slde. The western or west side is distinctive. It is 
rather forest than rank jungle, with the most of torrid rain. 
It is not unhealthful, and is lovely. 

Zelaya (zel?/a) . See the note on Cardenas and Zelaya. And 
footnote, p. 38. 



FEB 20 1SCC 



